Contested discourses: a feminist socio-legal examination of legal responses to prostitution in the UK

<p dir="ltr">In the UK, debates about prostitution and its harms, and therefore the appropriate legislative and policy responses, are entrenched within a complex web of legal, sociological and feminist theoretical debates and discourses which have become polarised along liberal and radical feminist lines. The former views prostitution as a form of violence related to societal gender inequality and the latter as a form of labour that women choose. Elements of these debates infuse contemporary legislation and policy. The law however, currently constructs two subjects of prostitution - the disorderly, public nuisance that is the vulnerable and exploited street prostitute, and the liberated, entrepreneurial sex worker who operates benignly in private. This polarisation ignores the diverse experiences of women who sell sex indoors, and those who want to exit. As a result, these women’s experiences remain outside law and policy debates aimed at reform.</p><p dir="ltr">While this polarisation is widely recognised as a false and limiting distinction, a key aim of this thesis is to examine how legal and policy frameworks have at once created and continue to reinforce this distinction. It investigates how women who sell sex indoors consider their involvement in and frame their attempts to exit prostitution within the context of current discourses, legislation and policy making which neglect them. It adopts a socio-legal approach informed by feminist critical realism. It draws on empirical data from 53 interviews with women involved in and exiting prostitution and eight interviews with exiting practitioners and combines this with three case studies which focus on the divergent approaches taken to implementing the law.</p><p dir="ltr">The findings confirm that the current laws are inadequate and fail to address the contemporary context of indoor prostitution. They particularly neglect the experiences of women involved in indoor prostitution who do not adhere to the existing legal ideal, or who struggle and wish to exit. These women’s experiences, and the complex and conditioned nature of their choices, remains hidden from view.</p><p dir="ltr">While women choose to exit indoor prostitution, their capacity to do so is limited by a number of barriers, which in combination can operate to entrench women in indoor prostitution. While women desire and benefit from both formal and informal support to overcome these barriers, the current structure of the law and the discourses which surround it mean support is limited. The consequence is that many women are prevented from choosing to exit prostitution. The voices of these women remain marginalized within current policy debates.</p><p dir="ltr">This thesis argues that the law matters in relation to women’s decision making about their involvement in and their exit from indoor prostitution through its effects within women’s legal consciousness. The law may not appear important in the day to day regulation of indoor prostitution, because on one hand it assumes a uniformity of experience of indoor prostitution that is not present and, on the other, many women involved in indoor prostitution fail to fully consider themselves as legal subjects. It is however of critical importance when it comes to exit, as it creates the conditions of possibility required for change. This thesis concludes that efforts at reform must move beyond polarizing discourses and instead consider the diverse range of experiences of women involved in and exiting indoor prostitution and aim to mitigate against the underlying structural gender inequalities and imbalances of power that become evident when this more complete picture of indoor prostitution comes into view. The findings from this thesis have implications for England &Wales and Scotland, but also for other jurisdictions evaluating the regulatory frameworks surrounding prostitution.</p>