Prostitution has often been referred to as the oldest profession in the world. Yet the Canadian legislature and courts refuse to recognize it as a profession but merely as a social nuisance or worse yet a social evil. While the act of selling sex in exchange for money is technically legal in Canada, all related activities are criminalized. The majority of social science studies concerning the impact of prostitution-related laws on the health, safety and wellbeing of prostitutes indicates that criminalization jeopardizes the safety of prostitutes, as well as their access to health and social services and recommends the decriminalization of the profession. Despite these studies and requests from sex workers and experts, the government has refused to repeal any of the prostitution-related laws. This paper outlines the societal and legislative treatment of prostitution and then seeks to determine whether decriminalization is a viable goal in Canada.

This thesis comprises a detailed analysis of sexual risk behavior among female sex workers participating in a prospective cohort study in Mombasa, Kenya between 1993 and 2007. To determine whether high-risk behavior has decreased over time, I examined trends in and associations with condom use and partner numbers at enrolment and over follow-up using multinomial logistic regression. While condom use increased among women enrolling into the cohort, women reduced partner numbers, rather than increasing condom use, over cohort visits. Workplace, charge for sex, duration of sex work, alcohol use, pregnancy and illness were all predictors of condom use. To evaluate the extent to which HIV risk estimates were affected by loss to follow-up, I investigated associations between sexual risk behavior, loss to follow-up, and HIV acquisition, using competing risks regression. Women reporting unprotected sex with multiple partners had the highest risk for HIV infection, and were also most likely to remain in the cohort. Finally, I used Andersen-Gill modeling to assess the impact of sexual risk behaviors on acquisition of sexually transmitted infections (STI) including gonorrhea, non-specific cervicitis, and trichomoniasis. While incident gonorrhea was closely associated with recent sexual risk behavior, incident trichomoniasis was not. Both conditions had high hazards for recurring in a 90-day window after a prior diagnosis. Non-specific cervicitis was demonstrated to be a chronic, relapsing condition associated with protected sex with multiple partners (possibly due to more frequent condom use) and with known biologic risk factors (i.e., pregnancy, hormonal contraceptive use, cervical ectopy, and genital ulcer disease). Overall, these analyses have led to a better understanding of how different sexual behavior patterns are associated with adverse outcomes, including HIV and STI acquisition, and identified specific factors associated with high-risk sexual behavior that may be amenable to intervention.

This thesis comprises a detailed analysis of sexual risk behavior among female sex workers participating in a prospective cohort study in Mombasa, Kenya between 1993 and 2007. To determine whether high-risk behavior has decreased over time, I examined trends in and associations with condom use and partner numbers at enrolment and over follow-up using multinomial logistic regression. While condom use increased among women enrolling into the cohort, women reduced partner numbers, rather than increasing condom use, over cohort visits. Workplace, charge for sex, duration of sex work, alcohol use, pregnancy and illness were all predictors of condom use. To evaluate the extent to which HIV risk estimates were affected by loss to follow-up, I investigated associations between sexual risk behavior, loss to follow-up, and HIV acquisition, using competing risks regression. Women reporting unprotected sex with multiple partners had the highest risk for HIV infection, and were also most likely to remain in the cohort. Finally, I used Andersen-Gill modeling to assess the impact of sexual risk behaviors on acquisition of sexually transmitted infections (STI) including gonorrhea, non-specific cervicitis, and trichomoniasis. While incident gonorrhea was closely associated with recent sexual risk behavior, incident trichomoniasis was not. Both conditions had high hazards for recurring in a 90-day window after a prior diagnosis. Non-specific cervicitis was demonstrated to be a chronic, relapsing condition associated with protected sex with multiple partners (possibly due to more frequent condom use) and with known biologic risk factors (i.e., pregnancy, hormonal contraceptive use, cervical ectopy, and genital ulcer disease). Overall, these analyses have led to a better understanding of how different sexual behavior patterns are associated with adverse outcomes, including HIV and STI acquisition, and identified specific factors associated with high-risk sexual behavior that may be amenable to intervention.

Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

The aim of this thesis is to describe how the problem of prostitution is framed by Amnesty International. The gap in existing lines of scholarship on framing and prostitution policies, and framing and transnational advocacy networks, is the lack of descriptive research on international framing of prostitution by Amnesty International. The theoretical approach of this thesis is social constructivism, framing theory and previous studies on prostitution paradigms. By using framing theory together with previous studies on prostitution paradigms this thesis aim to specifically answer how the problem of prostitution is framed by AI; what they recognize as the problem, cause and solution to the problem. The methods to conduct this study is qualitative single case study, the data consists of official policy documents on sex work, further, the methods of analysis is qualitative textual analysis of the content of the data. The results of this study is that the problem of prostitution is given a human rights frame by Amnesty International that points out the legislative, social, and individual injustices caused by criminalization and that sex work is suggested to be decriminalized because sex workers rights are human rights that is constantly being violated at the hands of state and non-state actors.

This thesis considers how in the course of their work female sex workers in Hong Kong experience risk. It concerns the indoor side of the sex market, an area which has so far been largely ignored in studies on commercial sex. The focus is on women working independently from flats. Focusing on women's own accounts of work-related risks, risky behaviour and coping strategies, this study investigates sex workers' reflexive understandings of prostitution and their occupational risk in late modern societies. The study emphasises the social, cultural, interactional and situational context, to understand the ways in which women involved in sex work conceptualise and respond to risk. There are three main themes emerge in sex workers' accounts. The first one is sexual health and diseases. In this empirical chapter, the main focus is on the flat-working women's accounts of themselves and their risk-taking (or risk-avoiding) behaviour in (potentially) risky situations, where, for example, unprotected sex has occurred. The findings suggest that, despite sex workers are being frequently seen as most susceptible to sexual health problems, the social norms which exist among sex workers and their clients play a crucial role in enabling sex workers to gain control over the sexual encounter and avoid risk behaviour. The next theme is violence against sex workers. Findings suggest that what violent crime symbolises in the context of sex work is that some women are beneath contempt because of their working identity. It is more “acceptable” to perpetrate violence against sex workers because this group is set apart from women in other service occupations. The last theme is concerned with sex workers' accounts of their emotional experiences at work, which mainly explores how social and cultural factors influence individuals' interpretation and accounts of their emotions. Accounts given by women demonstrate that many of them seemingly did not conceive their involvement in the sex business as “wrong”. Nevertheless, because sex work is still largely marginalised and stigmatised in Chinese societies, they might experience unpleasant emotions which were mostly related to the “whore” stigma.

A qualitative exploratory study informed by a community-based research model was conducted, involving the non-governmental organization Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, and community-based organization Chaitanya Mahila Sangha led by women in sex work, in India at each stage of the study. In-depth interviews were conducted by community research investigators among a purposive sample of 21 female sex workers and male intimate partners in Bagalkot district, Karnataka, India to explore how they describe their experience and understandings of intimate partner violence (IPV). The results show the social significance of intimate relationships as well as the interplay of multi-leveled issues underlying the vulnerability to intimate partner violence among sex-workers. The findings support the need for structural interventions working not only on the individual and relationship levels to address relevant triggers of violence, but also the community and societal levels, with the integral involvement of community partners, to more effectively address vulnerability to IPV.

Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

The concept of the ‘procurer’ comes from section 212 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which prohibits directing, enticing, assisting or profiting off the prostitution of another person. A contentious debate surrounds Canada’s prostitution laws, with a constitutional challenge currently before the Supreme Court. Within this climate of debate, the concept of the ‘procurer’ has moved out of the strictly legal sphere and into a broader discourse, with a range of parties laying their claims to truth on the “realities” of the industry generally and on the procurer specifically. Using a methodology of Foucauldian discourse analysis, this thesis examines Ontario Provincial Court case summaries to consider the contribution of the Canadian judiciary to discourse on the procurer. Findings suggest that the judiciary replicates many of the existing stereotypes of prostitution and its participants, such as the procurer as pimp, while (re)producing a small counter discourse of the procurer as business manager.

The informal settlement of Kibera in Nairobi has a significantly higher prevalence of HIV than the Kenyan average. Sex workers and their male clients from Kibera were recently surveyed; their responses indicate a population that is well mixed with large variance in individual number of sexual contacts. Hence, a multigroup two-sex model is created to study HIV spread in the sex working population of Kibera. This model is parameterized to the Kibera data, and the e ffects of various parameters on the prevalence of HIV and the risk of infection to individuals are studied by an elasticity analysis. The probability of infection from males to females per sexual act has the greatest implications for HIV control. A simplified model is presented and a theoretical analysis gives the reproduction number and proves global stability of the endemic equilibrium. / Graduate