Trafficking changes Nordic prostitution policies

Researchers from the whole of the Nordic Region have taken part in the project, which was run by the Nordic Gender Institute (NIKK) on behalf of the gender equality ministers.They have spent a year compiling knowledge of legislation, social measures and attitudes to prostitution in the Nordic countries. The project managers were Charlotta Holmström of Malmö University and May-Len Skilbrei of FAFO in Oslo.

As prostitution has become more international, it has also started to be more widely available. The Internet and mobile phones are examples of new ways of making contact that are having an increasing impact on the prostitution market. The market is in a state of flux, and knowledge of the current situation in the Nordic Region is urgently needed.

As the prostitution market and legislation are changing, there is also a clear research interest in whether this has had an impact on the general public's attitudes to prostitution. Several sub-studies dealt with this particular aspect of the broader issue. It is especially interesting that support for the Swedish law on procuring sexual services is high in Sweden – 71% are in favour of retaining it. However, the same study also shows that the general public in Sweden has little faith that the law has had any effect on the scale of prostitution. A mere 20% of respondents believe the number of people who pay for sex has been reduced.

The results of the project's qualitative studies seem to suggest that a view is emerging of prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes as a legal problem rather than a social and/or gender-equality issue. Officials (police officers and social workers) and the media both present the question of prostitution as an important legal issue, – as a question of law and order and of border controls.

Knowledge about the scale of prostitution in the Region is limited, and what knowledge does exist was produced in specific contexts – mainly in relation to social work and types of social interventions. People and arenas not observed by social workers remain invisible (e.g. men who sell sex, youngsters who sell themselves online or in other arenas).

In recent years, official Nordic bodies have been careful about presenting estimates of the scale of trafficking for sexual purposes. Official bodies and other organisations often assume that the number is high and that the identified cases only represent the tip of the iceberg. It is extremely difficult to come to definitive conclusions about the scale of trafficking, and equally difficult to compare the estimates of scale because the various official bodies and different countries base their data on different definitions and calculations.

The general view in the Nordic Region is that prostitution is a social problem, however the different countries have different ways of dealing with it. In Norway, Denmark and Finland the social services direct their efforts towards damage limitation, while Sweden has a zero-tolerance tradition, i.e. endeavouring to get women and men out of prostitution.

How prostitution is dealt with legally varies greatly in the Region. Sweden introduced a ban on purchasing sex in 1999. As recently as 2007, the ban on supporting yourself through prostitution was repealed in Iceland. Some common lines do exist, however. The idea of criminalising the purchase of sexual services has been discussed in all of the Nordic countries, and they all have anti-trafficking legislation. Legislation on pimping has also changed in the Nordic countries in the last decade. One important observation made by the project is that the whole issue of prostitution is increasingly formulated as a legal matter, and a legal problem, rather than as a social issue.

The researchers will present their results at a conference in Stockholm, 16-17 October. A summary research report (in Scandinavian and Finnish) and a special theme edition of NIKK magazine (in Scandinavian) will be published at the conference, with a more substantial research report to follow later in the autumn.

Contacts:
Charlotta Holmström, project manager, e-mail charlotta.holmstrom@mah.se,
phone: +46 (0)766 321861
May-Len Skilbrei, project manager, e-mail may-len.skilebrei@fafo.no, phone: +47 95122315