Summary

Criminalising the purchase but not the sale of sex was, at the time of implementation in 1999, an unprecedented legal model, and it has since received considerable

attention worldwide. While the Swedish government defends the ban as largely successful, others have criticised it for failing to respond to sex workers’ needs and rights. These different perspectives on the efficacy of the Swedish Model reflect different understandings of what sex work represents and entails. This thesis analysed discourses representative of these understandings and investigated the impact that they have on sex workers’ human rights entitlements. Discourse is not simply a static representation of self-contained thought, but the concepts and understandings it constructs influence our immediate, physical reality. Human rights, as universal and inalienable concepts, provide an effective and persuasive basis for groups to defend their interests and wellbeing, and a compelling method of giving concrete meaning to discourse.

In response to the first research question, this thesis began by examining how sex work and sex workers are constructed in the discourses of the 2010 Swedish government report and the NSWP toolkit. The 2010 report constructs prostitutes as victims who are unable to make informed decisions and are especially vulnerable to violence and abuse. They are lured and trafficked into prostitution where pimps, traffickers and clients take advantage of them. Accordingly, the sale of a woman’s body to a man is always exploitative and is therefore a threat to gender equality, a long-established Swedish value. This justifies the proactive response of the government in the form of the ban against the purchase of sexual services. This legislation serves a double purpose: it protects prostituted persons and it declares to the rest of the world that the Swedish state will not accept prostitution.

On the other hand, the discourse of the NSWP toolkit describes the Swedish state as engineering understandings of prostitution as a manifestation of violence and gendered oppression: sex workers who claim agency are silenced, discredited and denied basic rights. Furthermore, the NSWP points out that the Swedish government fails to adequately acknowledge that men and trans people also sell sex. The toolkit highlights the variability of sex work: it can be harmful but it can also be consensual and a legitimate source of income. The state is therefore uncooperative and

uncongenial towards voluntary sex workers, who are often targeted by various state authorities. The agency and autonomy of sex workers is emphasised in the discourse of the NSWP: sex workers are entitled to the same rights as any other citizen and the NSWP is firmly opposed to the ban against the purchase of sexual services.

Next this thesis analysed which aspects of the sale of sex are presented as problematic by each party and the impact of these problematizations in the Swedish context, as was mandated by the second research question. The Swedish government

problematizes prostitution in several ways: first, its inherently violent, exploitative and oppressive nature poses an immediate threat to prostitutes. Next, the symbolic significance of the sale of the female body to a man threatens the values and

because it is always forced. The ban, as an effective response to public concern, is seen as a way to enable prostitutes to make better choices for themselves. Because of the authority inherent to the state, these constructions are highly powerful in shaping mainstream understandings, particularly in the Swedish context where gender equality is a recurrent topic of public conversation. The report therefore makes little attempt to convince the reader: public consensus is presumed.

The NSWP toolkit constructs a different social problem: it is not the sale of sex itself that is problematic but the Swedish government’s response to it. The NSWP does not deny that risks can be associated with sex work, but the manner in which the Swedish state copes with and portrays these risks can exacerbate them and increase the stigma and discrimination experienced by sex workers. The NSWP argues that the ban disempowers sex workers by patronisingly characterising them as incapable and vulnerable. The toolkit seeks to persuade the reader that the Swedish Model is significantly flawed: it is an effort to subvert the ‘discursive vacuum’ created by the Swedish government (NSWP, 2015: 1:9).

Finally, the ways in which these constructions shape understandings of sex workers’ human rights entitlements constitutes the sixth chapter of this thesis. The discourse of the Swedish government report shapes sex workers as vulnerable, traumatised victims and justifies a version of human rights that protects and shields sex workers from harms intrinsic to their work. Prostitution therefore denies prostitutes’ right to safe and healthy working conditions, their right to be free from cruel, inhuman treatment, their right to be free from slavery, their right to be free from gendered discrimination and their right to health. The state’s opposition to harm reduction measures, despite the NSWP’s assertion that this violates sex workers’ right to health, is justified because such measures are constructed as inimical to the state’s goal of totally eliminating prostitution.

Unlike the 2010 report, the NSWP toolkit employs human rights to support its argumentation in an explicit, meticulous manner. The NSWP contends that the Swedish Model is in violation to numerous rights including the right to health, the right to social security, the right to be free from unlawful interference with one’s family and the right to personal security.

At the core of the prostitution debate in Sweden is whether or not the sale of sex can be consensual: this determines whether prostitutes are indeed invariably vulnerable and requiring state protection, or whether they can claim agency and autonomy and seek empowerment. The human rights to self-determination and to be free from exploitation of prostitution are key here. The Swedish state sees the sale of sex as a threat to prostitutes’ self-determination because the decision to sell sex can never be undertaken freely. According to the argumentation of the NSWP toolkit, it is the Swedish Model that denies self-determination because it seeks to eliminate the option of selling sex, it denies sex workers the possibility to participate in policy

formulation, and it re-inscribes gendered stereotypes by qualifying sex workers as women who are victims of the patriarchy.

The right to be free from exploitation of prostitution is the only instance in any UN human rights convention where prostitution is mentioned, but no explanation of what constitutes exploitation is given. While the Swedish state views all prostitution as

necessarily exploitative, the NSWP argues that while this can be the case, it is not always so. Prostitution is frequently characterised as exploitative because prostitutes are often typified as being forced to sell sex by their traumatic pasts, abusive pimps or financial constraints. This characterisation can also be linked to moral convictions: the sexual self is often attached to intimacy, self-worth and love and sexual

expression is seen as particularly precious, making the sale of sex a unique form of subjugation.