The decriminalisation of sex work in New Zealand puts brothels on the same legal footing as businesses in other industries, offering the potential to protect sex workers from workplace harms. Claire Weinhold examines whether framing brothels as businesses like any other provides the safeguards sex workers need.
New Zealand decriminalised sex work for citizens and permanent residents over the age of 18 in 2003, becoming the first country to do so. The Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) allows sex workers and brothel operators to conduct their business free from risk of prosecution.
Decriminalisation reduces obstacles to reporting assault, exploitation and other harms perpetrated by both clients and brothel managers. New Zealand’s sex workers have consistently reported benefits from working in a decriminalised environment.
Brothel operators have also benefitted from the law change, promoting their businesses as safe and ethical spaces where sex workers’ rights and wellbeing are promoted and protected. But how does the idea that brothels are regular businesses work for brothel-based sex workers and what does it mean for those who manage brothels?
Our new research found that by positioning brothels as businesses like any other, there is a risk that sex work simply imports the sorts of control and exploitation that increasingly characterise the modern workplace.
In the words of one operator/worker we interviewed: "If you can’t get away with it at McDonald's, then you can’t get away with it here.”
Understanding the law
How well the PRA works to improve working conditions in brothels depends, in part, on brothel managers’ understanding of the law. In our research, operators demonstrated differing levels of understanding about what the PRA expects of them. Sex workers are classified as independent contractors which means they should retain control over how, where and when they work. However, many brothel managers still expect sex workers to turn up for shifts and remain on site for set hours, contravening this arrangement.
One operator described a contract he required workers as independent contractors to sign:
“It just includes the basics, like a disclaimer about they need to pay their own tax, and things about how many shifts they need to do per week. How long the shifts are. Because if you don’t get their agreement to that it won’t work. If you have it on paper you can say look, you never turned up last night. Or you only turned up for three shifts and you’re meant to do four.”
The law also does not allow anyone to require sex workers to provide any commercial sexual service. Sex workers can refuse or end bookings with customers for any reason. However, many operators believe this is at odds with running a viable business. Sex workers commonly report being coaxed or obligated to accept bookings and this is often justified on grounds of professionalism and profit.
One shift supervisor and sex worker interviewed for our research remarked:
“Since forever it’s been the way that we all know that they [clients] come up the stairs and you just sort of take whoever comes your way. Not if it’s really, you know, obviously dangerous. […] But that’s what you do, you look out for each other cos you kind of accept it’s not always ideal. But it comes with the job. Saying no just, well. It just loses everyone money. Not okay.”
Her comments reveal the ongoing tension between sex workers’ right to refuse clients and operators’ financial interest in maximising revenue.
Sex workers as workers
Part of the reason for operators’ expectations that workers accept bookings is because, in designating sex work as work, there is a danger that sex industry businesses treat sex workers as employees. This is in spite of many operators’ practice of terminating their business relationships with workers with immediate effect and their reluctance to issue substantive contracts.
Operators often compare sex workers with those in other industries. They frequently have expectations that workers will ‘behave’ in accordance with managerial values that are framed in rational ways. Sex workers are expected to conduct themselves as businesspeople who, rationally, are always in pursuit of profit above all other considerations.
As a result, many operators - particularly at the higher-priced end of the industry - are very selective about who they allow to work at their business. Whilst this is ostensibly rational, it often works in ways that exclude people of colour, gender non-conforming sex workers, those whose body size does not meet limiting norms and those whose presentation is non-standard.
These practices reinforce the stigma directed towards sex workers who do not meet these standards. Those who do ‘make the cut’ are often subject to intolerable controls over how they look, how they behave, what they wear and what they are ‘worth’. As in other sectors, such practices allow workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination to occur in reasonably subtle ways, disguised and justified by ‘good business practice’.
Stigma and the sex industry
The adoption of mainstream standards of business operation and appearance can be a way to counter many of the negative stereotypes associated with the sex industry. These include assumptions about sex workers as coerced, as addicts, as unhygienic and deviant. Brothel operators’ sense that the sex industry remains stigmatised is well-justified. Migrant sex workers remain illegal in New Zealand. Bylaws limit where brothels are located and identified. The financial sector is frequently discriminatory towards the sex industry.
These things prompt brothel operators to adopt management practices intended to position themselves as responsible and legitimate business managers. These, I suggest, are not always to sex workers’ advantage.
Businesses, but not as any other
The hidden nature of sex industry businesses means that regulatory oversight depends upon those within the industry to raise concerns about poor practices. But discrimination aimed at both sex workers and industry managers limits both knowledge and willingness to do that in all but the most serious cases.
The demand that sex work is recognised as work means that sex workers want to be treated as people with rights. It does not mean that they accept or agree with the sorts of harmful workplace practices that proliferate across most areas of the economy. Many sex workers choose sex work because it is more flexible, because it allows them to sidestep racialised and gendered expectations.
They choose sex work because working a few hours a week, as a carer, as a person with disabilities, as a student, is a realistic option. What sex workers do not need is brothel operators to import the sorts of harmful behaviours other sectors choose to ignore, hide or justify as business as usual.
