Prostitution legislation: Will they go the same way?

By Ulrikke Moustgaard

On  Halmtorvet in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, a continuous stream of cars passes each night. Particularly during the weekends, they crawl past the area where young East-European women stand about selling sexual services. Neither the clients nor the women do anything illegal – as long as the women have a residence permit in the country and pay their taxes. But the situation might change. Denmark is currently in the middle of a heated public debate on trafficking and prostitution, and one sugges­tion is that the country should follow its neigh­bours and criminalise the buying of sex.

Foto: Fredrik Naumann/Samfoto

In Sweden, Norway and Finland, the legi­slation on prostitution has undergone signifi­cant changes over the last decade. Sweden was first in banning the buying of sex in 1999. In Finland, a prohibition against buying sex from victims of human trafficking was introduced in 2007.  And this year, Norway, too, has decided to outlaw the purchase of sexual services.

The development has been both rapid – and surprising.

“The Nordic prostitution laws have become more uniform, despite the fact that only ten years ago, when the Swedes criminalised the buying of sex, it was, for example, totally unthinkable that a similar discussion would start in Denmark,” says May-Len Skilbrei, Doctor of Political Science working at the research foundation Fafo in Oslo, and co-leader of NIKK’s research project Prostitution in the Nordic Countries.

Conflicting views

Prostitution has, for a long time, been a contro­versial theme in the Nordic countries, since the countries have held very different views of the phenomenon.

Sweden and Denmark have represented an extreme standpoint each. While Sweden regarded prostitution as a gender equality issue associated with the so-called theory of gendered power, Denmark had a more liberal attitude towards prostitution and saw it as a social problem. Iceland followed the Danish view. Norway and Finland tottered in between.

Attitudes moved even further apart when Sweden criminalised prostitution customers in 1999, while Denmark the very same year chose to decriminalize prostitution. In connection with the 2003 Olympic Games in Athens, the then Swedish Minister for Gender Equality, Margareta Winberg urged her Nordic and Baltic colleagues to sign a common letter of protest against the city’s deci­sion to issue licenses for 30 extra brothels to serve the Olympic masses. Her Danish colleague, Henriette Kjær, responded to the initiative by publicly calling it ‘nanny-like’ and ‘a joke’.

But since then, the tune has changed. This is due not least to a new tendency in the prostitution market: human trafficking.

If the Nordic countries earlier found it difficult to agree on how prostitution should be understood, the increasing trafficking in humans to the region during the last few years has now provided a new and shared point of reference.

The media in all the Nordic countries have, from the turn of the millennium onwards, been filled with stories on human trafficking. The focus has been on women being seriously abused or even forced or kidnapped into the sex business.

“The theme of human trafficking is some­thing that all can agree on, which has made cooperation easier – and thereby the coun­tries have influenced each other. This is proved by the changes in the Nordic legislation; for example, the development of decriminalisation of living on an income from prostitution. Approaches have moved from considering the problem with prostitution as being that somebody lives off the earnings, to an increased focus on the abuse of people within prostitution,” says May-Len Skilbrei.

There has also been agreement as to the need to stir up the general attitudes towards prostitution and trafficking. Together with the Baltic states, the Nordic Council of Ministers launched a campaign against trafficking in 2002.

“Both the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Council wanted to make a joint effort to counteract trafficking. The aim was to trigger a large public debate,” says Carita Peltonen, Senior Adviser for Gender Equality in the Nordic Council of Ministers.

From radical to normal

Since then, things have moved very quickly. Finland was the first country, after Sweden, to revise its legislation.

“The original proposition was actually modelled on the Swedish law, but the ensuing public debate in Finland on the issue was so strong, that it resulted in the compromise of only criminalising the buying
of sex from victims of human trafficking,” Carita Peltonen explains.

Norway will introduce a ban on buying sexual services from the beginning of 2009. In Iceland, the Minister of Justice appointed a committee in 2006 that was to present recommendations on which way to choose in Iceland. Here, the Swedish approach was discussed, but a majority of the committee did not support a suggestion for prohibiting the buying of sex.

Instead, the following year Iceland chose the Danish line and decriminalized prostitutes. And now there is a lively debate also in Denmark on a possible banning of the purchase of sexual services.

“Everybody thought that the Swedish law was radical when it was passed in 1999, but this has gradually changed,” Carita Peltonen concludes.

Although the Nordic countries have develo­ped more or less along the same lines when it comes to their prostitution legislation, there are still big differences between the countries.

The sex-purchase laws of Norway and Sweden differ from each other, for example, in that Norwegians are forbidden to buy sex not only in their own country; in future, Norwegian citizens can also be sentenced for buying sex abroad.

As has been said above, in Finland only the purchase of sex from victims of human trafficking is punishable, and not one sentence has so far been given.

Divided into two camps

The definitions of prostitution in the various Nordic legislations still also display big differences. In this respect, the Nordic region is divided into two camps: the practical and descriptive, and the moral and normative.

The first camp consists of Norway, Finland and Sweden, who give prostitution a concrete definition. The wording in the new Nor­wegian law is: “sexual intercourse or action through giving or agreeing on a payment”.

Denmark and Iceland form the other camp. Here prostitution is still officially defined as “sexual indecency”.

“This is partly explained by the legislation process. Norway and Sweden have carried out extensive changes, so it was natural to change also the wording of the law. But the Danish prostitution debate has not resulted in similar concrete changes in the law, so the wording of the law does not any longer totally correspond to how we think of prostitution,” says May-Len Skilbrei.

On the other hand, the regulations on human trafficking are very uniform in all the Nordic countries. This is primarily explained by the United Nations Palermo Protocol against human trafficking, which the Nordic countries signed in 2000, and today all of them have introduced legislation forbidding trafficking in humans.
The Danish legislation remains more or less unchanged, except for a new paragraph on human trafficking in the criminal code.

But although the paragraph was introduced together with two action plans on traffic­king in women, it does not, to date, cover all areas of Danish prostitution. This is the case because there is a large group of women in Denmark who support themselves from prostitution, but who cannot receive help due to the strict Danish immigration laws. These are women who have come to Denmark on grounds of marriage or reuniting families, explains Marlene Spanger, doctoral student at the Roskilde University Department of Society and Globalisation in Denmark.

“The immigration law requires seven years of marriage before a foreign citizen can get a residence permit in Denmark. This rule and the family supporting duty make these women very vulnerable to abuse and very dependent on their husbands. In case they would need help, they are left in a no-man’s-land.  They are not interested in getting help through the authorities’ programme for human trafficking victims, since that entails 100 days of residence in Denmark and help in being sent back home. On the contrary, these women want to create a life in Denmark. In addition, this social group also falls outside of the category covered by the criminal code,” she says.

Even if the Nordic countries have overcome their fear of dealing with prostitution, it does not mean that prostitution has become a less controversial issue. Today, a variety of discourses fight for a place on the public stage. The Swedish focus, now joined by the Nor­wegian one, on the customers has gained a hearing in the Nordic Council of Ministers.

“A big shift has taken place from the early approach, when the main attention was on the women, their social situation and reasons why they had ended up in prostitution. Today the focus has turned onto the customers and the fact that men must also carry their responsibility in the fight against human trafficking,” says Carita Peltonen.

On the other hand, new voices opposing bans within prostitution have appeared. Sex workers, sexual-political associations and others increasingly engage in the legislation debate with warnings of a society where people lose their right to decide over their own body.

Susanne Dodillet, PhD at the History of Science and Ideas at the University of Gothenburg, thinks that the prostitution discourse is about to change in Sweden – the same place where the changes started ten years ago.

“The theory on gendered power and radical feminism, which are the ideas behind the Swedish sex-purchase law, are increasingly being questioned in Sweden,” she says.

She thinks this is due to international influences, such as queer theory – also called the third wave of feminism – that were imported from the US at the end of the 1990s.

“This leads to criticism of a sex-purchase law trying to set the norms for sexuality between adult, consenting people.”

Big adjustments needed

Regardless of how the debate will develop, the reforms of the Nordic legislation are not yet completed, May-Len Skilbrei thinks.

The prostitution market is changing, and new elements are being introduced, such as prostitution on the internet.

“I think we’re going to see big adjustments in the next few years. The situation will change, and the legislation must follow. It must become even more concrete, when it comes to identifying what forms of involvement in the prostitution of others is to be illegal.”

The view of help offered to victims of human trafficking is already changing.

“First, people imagined the worst forms of human trafficking: violent organisations, kidnapping, etc. It was thought that the victims must be isolated and protected. Today we know that abuse within prostitution can happen in many ways, and that women who have been abused in the migration and prostitution process have other needs, such as residence permits,” she explains.

On Halmtorvet in Copenhagen the stream of cars continues to pass by, indifferent to the debate. Perhaps the traffic will even increase, when the new Norwegian law comes into force in the beginning of 2009. At least there were several worried headlines in the Danish newspapers, when the news of the Norwegian ban on purchasing sexual ser­vices was published: “Denmark to be the Nordic brothel.”

Ulrikke Moustgaard is freelance journalist specialising in gender research.

 

 

This article has been published in NIKK magasin 1 2009 © NIKK