prostitution research paper titles

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• J Behav Addict
• v.2(4); 2013 Dec

Qualitative perspectives toward prostitution's perceived lifestyle addictiveness

Michael w. firmin.

1Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH, USA *

Alisha D. Lee

2University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

Ruth L. Firmin

3Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Lauren Mccotter Deakin

4Richmont Graduate University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Hannah J. Holmes

5Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

Authors' contribution: MWF supervised each aspect of the study, from conception, through data collection, analysis, and generating the submitted journal manuscript. ADL participated in part of the data collection and contributed to the literature review and other parts of the manuscript. RLF conducted the qualitative research analysis and assisted with writing the methods portion of the manuscript. LMD participated in part of the data collection and some portions of generating the manuscript. HJH wrote the project's literature review and generated portions of the discussion and limitations sections of the manuscript. All authors had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for its integrity and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Background and aims: The aim of the present study was to provide a phenomenological perspective of individuals who actively engage in street-level prostitution and identified a lifestyle addiction associated with their activities. Methods: We interviewed 25 women who were incarcerated in American county jails (at the time of interviews) for prostitution crimes. The transcripts were analyzed for themes that represented the shared consensus of the research participants. Results: Four negative psychological dynamics related to prostitution. First, participants described accounts of physical and emotional violence which they experienced at the hand of clients and others involved in the lifestyle. Second, interviewees explained an extreme dislike for their actions relating to and involving prostitution. These individuals did not describe themselves as being sexually addicted; sex was means to a desired end. Third, participants described how prostitution's lifestyle had evolved into something which they conceptualized as an addiction. As such, they did not describe themselves as feeling addicted to sex acts – but to lifestyle elements that accompanied prostitution behaviors. Finally, participants believed that freedom from prostitution's lifestyle would require social service assistance in order to overcome their lifestyle addiction. Conclusions: The results show that, although the prostitutes repeatedly and consistently used the term “addiction” when describing their lifestyles, they did not meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for addiction. Rather, they shared many of the same psychological constructs as do addicts (e.g., feeling trapped, desiring escape, needing help to change), but they did not meet medical criteria for addictive dependence (e.g., tolerance or withdrawal).

Spice's (2007) definition of prostitution emphasizes the wide range of backgrounds from which women are lead into illicit sex work, including escort services, brothels, and street-level work. Spice further notes that prostitutes generally hold common values which motivate and often drive their behavior, despite the diversity of ethnicities, personal histories, education levels, and life experiences of these women. While it is hard to estimate the exact number of women working as prostitutes in the United States, the National Task Force on Prostitution (2008) estimated the number to be approximately two million. This staggering level of participation makes research regarding prostitution – including motivations for entry into and continuance in prostitution, effects of prostitution, and best practices for assisting women currently or previously involved with prostitution – a critical matter.

Main (2012) reported that those women who engage in “street-level” contexts of prostitution, one of the most common forms of sex work, have often received the lowest pay. Furthermore, Reid (2011) and Miller (1993) found that women who were “street-prostitutes” encountered higher instances of abuse and violence than did those women who engaged in other contexts of sex work. In light of Miller's (1993) findings, strong underlying motivations seemingly are held by most women who regularly engage in sex work – and particularly street-level prostitution – considering they risk personal health and safety in order to continue in their prostitution behaviors.

While our study focuses on the detrimental psychological dynamics involved with dynamics involved with prostitution, other researchers have explored the experiences and specific actions taken by women engaged in the behaviors. For example, common experiences include health risks and physical harm ( Raymond, Hughes & Gomez, 2010 ). Sanders (2004) reported that sex workers often feel ready to cope with health risks such as sexually transmitted diseases, seeing them as simply “part of the job”. Additionally, sex workers often more readily recognize the risk of physical harm, which Spice (2007) labels the greatest threat to the well-being of women who engage in prostitution. In addition, past researchers also have investigated steps which women have taken in order to protect their physical safety. Both O'Doherty (2011) and Williamson and Folaron (2003) reported that women tend to rely on their intuition when determining the likelihood that a client may hurt them, making exchanges in visible areas, and sometimes carrying a small weapon in order to protect themselves from physical harm. The central focus of most previous research has been on the Potential physical harm that may come to women involved in prostitution and the ways in which the women can maintain physical safety ( Heilemann & Santhiveeran, 2011 ).

Much less research has evaluated the negative impact that sex work may have on the psychological health of these women. Furthermore, it is much more difficult to take practical steps to protect one's psychological health than it is to protect one's physical health. For this reason, we believe it beneficial to investigate the psychological dynamics, including strain, that women experience as a result of prostitution.

Despite the obvious existence of multiple risks that accompany involvement in street-level prostitution, Lucas (2005) reported the women in her sample insisted that their involvement in prostitution was the result of their own, personal choices. Furthermore, the participants seemingly perceived prostitution as something that enhanced their ability to adapt to certain situations outside of the prostitution environment. Belcher and Herr (2005) advance the findings in that women engaged in prostitution often were focused on temporary, short-term rewards. Overall, participants placed high value on more immediate-gratification motivations, such as money. While experiencing some perceived short-term perceived benefit, the women admittedly allowed themselves to be controlled by extrinsic, immediate gratification factors, leaving them feeling hopeless and unable to exit the lifestyle. These results are congruent with Williamson and Folaron's (2003) findings that, as women engaged in prostitution, they became increasingly attached to such lifestyles. In addition, Williamson and Folaron report the social networks that women established within their prostitution-associated circles to be motivating and drawing dynamics that encouraged women to continue in their lifestyles of prostitution.

Given the numerous harmful effects of engaging in a lifestyle of prostitution, some researchers (e.g., Cimino, 2012 ; Sanders, 2007 ) have focused more efforts toward understanding the complex, complicated process of exiting prostitution. Baker, Dalla and Williamson (2010) examined four models that address cognitive and behavioral change processes, two of which specifically pertain to exiting prostitution, and proposed their own integrative model. Their model describes six stages of exiting prostitution, which draw on the strengths of the evaluated theories and seeks to correct the weaknesses: immersion, awareness, deliberate preparation, initial exit, reentry, and final exit. The formulation of these stages provides researchers with a helpful framework for understanding the significance of research on women engaged in prostitution.

The present study sought to further investigate further various dynamics that prostitution had on the lives of participating women. Previous research primarily has focused on the experiences and specific behaviors of women engaged in prostitution, so we desired to advance the research literature in this field by exploring how street-level female prostitutes came to understand the personal constructs involved with their behaviors. We believe that better understanding these dynamics, combined with previous literature regarding the motivations of prostitutes, will aid human service workers who assist this population group and can be used to inform policies and programs aimed toward helping women exit prostitution.

Since surveys fail to absorb the “thick description” ( Damianakis & Woodford, 2012 ) or quality of information to be collected from a sample of prostitutes, we deemed qualitative methodologies to be most apt for the objectives of the present study. Participant observation approaches contained potentially unacceptable safety risks to the researchers, as well as other obvious logistical and ethical issues. Consequently, we pursued a phenomenological, qualitative paradigm as being most prudent for accomplishing the present research aims.

Participants

Interviews were obtained from 25 women who were incarcerated at county jails, being arrested on charges of street-level prostitution. Ages of the women ranged from 21–42, with a median age of 29 years old. Sixteen of the participants in the sample were Caucasian, and the others were African-American. Consistent with standard qualitative research protocol, we utilized criterion sampling, selecting individuals who met the condition of interest for the aim of the present research study. Particularly, the sample represented all the incarcerated inmates (who met the standard), being located in two county jails. The prisons were located in medium-sized, Midwest cities and most participants reported growing up within a 100 mile radius or so of the jail where they were incarcerated. Due to the obvious sensitivity of the subject matter, anonymity was assured to the research participants, so we deliberately are choosing to keep demographic information about the participants to a minimum in the present article. Obviously, names used for reading clarity are pseudonyms and the study met university IRB requirements.

Saturation ( Bernard, 2011 ) occurred during the data collection, providing reasonable assurance that the sample size was adequate for the study's objectives. Particularly, after approximately twenty interviews, we were finding that the law of diminishing returns was occurring with the data. As such, adding new individuals to the sample was not adding significant amounts of new insights to the study's overall findings. Consistent with Guest, Bunce and Johnson (2006) and Neuman (2006) , we believe that the sample size was sufficient to the research objectives established for the present qualitative study.

Among the various types of qualitative methodology ( Creswell, 2012 ), we designed the present investigation as a phenomenological research study. As such, our aim in the study was to obtain the perspectives of the participants and to report their perceptions, from the vantage points of their own words, ideology, and constructs ( Denzin & Lincoln, 2008 ). One-on-one interviews occurred in conference rooms inside the jails and were tape recorded for later analysis. The interviewer was always female in order to make the interview situation as comfortable as possible for the participants, due to the sensitivity of the subject. None of the researchers have backgrounds with prostitution, so the interviewers were outsiders to the research construct ( Cohen, 2000 ; Miller & Crabtree, 2004 ), affording potential greater objectivity on the part of the researchers. During data collection, we utilized semi-structured interview formats ( Alvesson, 2011 ). This allowed the participants at times to take the interviews in diverse directions, encouraging them to share with us their own stories, cogent life impacts, and help us understand their worlds as much as they were able to do so ( Potter & Hepburn, 2005 ). We believed that, given the complex nature of prostitution and also the other struggles these women experienced, the semi-structured format would obtain the best and most useful information for the study's objectives.

When analyzing the data, we utilized an open coding process ( Maxwell, 2012 ). This means we approached the transcripts in an inductive manner. We did not have particular pre-conceived constructs for which we were looking. Rather, we used constant-comparison among and within the transcripts in order to identify reoccurring words, ideas, and concepts ( Chenail, 2012 ). These generated codes that were useful in managing the analysis. Sometimes the codes were collapsed or combined, due to evident similarity in the participants' percepts. In other cases, we abandoned some codes since they lacked enough support to be representative of the sample at large ( Creswell, 2008 ). The utilization of the qualitative analysis software NVIVO-8 helped to manage this process. However, consistent with ( Lewins & Silver, 2007 ), we did not let the analysis process become “automated,” removing the human intuitive and subjective element out of the process. In other words, the qualitative software analysis system worked for us as researchers and not vice versa.

From the codes, themes emerged. These were constructs in the findings that were reflected in most of the participant's views ( Ryan & Bernard, 2003 ). Consequently, all of the findings reported in the present study represent the consensus of all the participants in the study. Overall, the findings showed detrimental relational, social, and psychological effects of women in our sample engaging in prostitution activities. Due to limited publication space in the present article, we are reporting only the relational effects here.

Our intent was to generate a research study that possessed robust rigor, by qualitative research standards ( Cope, 2004 ; De Wet & Erasmus, 2005 ). Internal validity for the study was enhanced in a number of ways. One was via meetings among the researchers in order to collaborate regarding potential coding strategies and thematic analysis ( Bogdan & Biklen, 2007 ). Consequently, the results of the present study represent the results of dialogue, thorough discussion, and detailed analysis among multiple researchers who collaborated in a team effort in the present study. Additionally, we employed a qualitative researcher, independent of the data collection and analysis, to provide autonomous feedback to the researchers regarding the research questions, methodology, and analysis ( Grbich, 2007 ). This served as a helpful, independent check on our protocol and assurance that the results we are presenting were aptly grounded in appropriate qualitative methodology and to the actual transcript data collected.

Member checking ( Metro-Jaffe, 2011 ) was utilized in order to garner feedback from the research participants. This involves sharing the general findings with those who provided the interviews. The process allowed us to check to ensure that what we concluded in the study aptly reflected the actual sentiments of the research participants. Consistently, we found that the results presented in the present article did accurately portray what the research participants agreed were their overriding sentiments. Data trails ( Rodgers, 2008 ) were generated in order to enhance the study's internal validity. This involved tying each of the results reported in the present article to particular quotes and citations by the respective research participants. This process has three benefits. First, it helps to ensure that each finding reported aptly represents the consensus of all the participants. Second, data trails allows other qualitative researchers to check our research for independent analysis, if desired, should anyone later suspect fraudulent research occurred. Third, data trails also can aid future researchers who wish further to explore this subject. They provide these researchers with starting points that they can use in order to enhance and further their own research designs and allow for helpful comparisons with the present one.

The study procedures were carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The Institutional Review Board of the Cedarville University approved the study. All subjects were informed about the study and all provided informed consent.

Women in our study reported four psychological dynamics when relating their personal constructs about prostitution. First, participants described accounts of physical and emotional violence which they experienced at the hand of clients and others involved in the lifestyle. Next, interviewees explained an extreme dislike for their actions relating to and involving prostitution. Third, participants described how the lifestyle of prostitution had evolved into something which they viewed as a psychological addiction. However, they used the term vernacularly rather than in a medical sense. Finally, participants shared hopes they had of changing their lifestyles in the future – but also needing intervention and social service assistance to do so.

Harmful view of prostitution

The women in our study shared many disturbing stories in which they were victims of violence and rape during the time they spent engaging in prostitution behaviors. Most participants described experiences of physical abuse, sexual assault, or both. While the details of each woman's story varied, the general theme of victimization was woven throughout the participants' lives as prostitutes. For example, Caroline recollected a time in which she was physically assaulted by a client:

I've been hurt plenty of times. Well for instance, this scar that's on my chin right here [pointing to her chin]. When I asked for my money first, I was punched in the mouth by brass knuckles and forced back into the car. I had a tooth knocked out. I couldn't eat for weeks. I thought I was going to die.

For most participants in our study, the physical violence they experienced was accompanied by sexual violence. This sexual violence may have both emotionally and physically detrimental effects. Not only must women endure the initial humiliation of being sexually assaulted, but they also may acquire sexually-transmitted diseases, sometimes without the opportunity of using protection in order to prevent this from happening. Hope, for example, discussed this risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease as a result of being sexually assaulted:

Yeah, yeah it's [prostitution] very dangerous. Especially because there's girls out there that have HIV and still do it. Yeah, I've been like tied up and threatened to have some stuff shoved up me.

Additionally, Crystal captured the combination of physical and sexual violence that perpetrators sometimes force on their prostitution victims:

I've been raped several, several times. I've been at gun point. Tasered. Uh, I've had a lot of guns thrown on me, held to my head. So I mean, just… yeah. Beat a lot.

Most participants described experiencing some sort of assault on multiple accounts. Among many of the women, physical and sexual assault seemed to be accepted as a part of daily life when engaging in prostitution. This acceptance phenomenon was so widespread that few women expressed feelings of self-efficacy that seemingly would encourage them to prevent future instances of physical or sexual violence.

In addition to the commonality of physical and sexual violence the women experienced, some women noted the fact that the harm they experienced while being involved in prostitution not only harmed them physically, but it resulted in emotional pain as well. Many expressed how the negative treatment of others toward them led these women to develop views of themselves portraying that they were neither good nor worthwhile people. Shannon, for example, confessed the damage she endured to her self-esteem and the shame she felt as a result:

There's some guys that act like they're police officers when you're out there and they force you. They pull knives on you and beat you up and stuff. Or, because you are soliciting and disrespecting yourself, other people, men and women, sometimes just take it upon themselves to degrade you, because you get the look about you or something. Like maybe like, sometimes, every now and then I get the strength to not use and it's like a big flashing sign around me that I'm a prostitute or something and so they'll just speak to you in disrespectful ways. They'll fight you and spit at you and stuff.

Further, participants shared awareness of the risks they were taking and the potential consequences of taking such risks. Dawn, for example, exemplified this awareness:

It's [prostitution] very, very, very, very dangerous. You never know in today's world who you're getting in a car with or if you're going to get out of that car.

Participants continually reiterated the fact that they were aware that each “trick” may be their last. However, there was little evidence that the women perceived any reasonable means of protecting themselves from future harm.

Most participants realized the imprudence of recurrently subjecting themselves to the risk of physical and sexual injury, but admitted the potential hazard was not enough to make them exit the lifestyle. The draw to the exhilaration experienced as part of the lifestyle seemed to outweigh the general concern for the women's personal safety. This caused many women to feel confused and often angry at themselves for making such poor decisions that could result in serious physical injury or death. Kathy, for example, described this incongruence between wanting to avoid harm and to continue in the lifestyle:

Because, I have been to the point where I get out of one trick's car and this is how the, I guess the sickness or the devil or whatever you want to call it or the conscience part of the person: get out, get beat, raped and everything and five minutes later get back in another car and go get high. I mean, we were talkin' the three of us girls were talking the other day about this, and it's really sad – the disease. Because we were all on our deathbed. Guy had a knife to our throat and everything. And when we get out of the one place, you get right back into another car – that's insanity.

Disliking prostitution

Participants consistently reported disliking prostitution and the behaviors that accompany the lifestyle. The most popular reason given by women was that engaging in the acts made the women “feel dirty”. Additionally, women described how they were tired of being on the streets and having to endure the cycle of repetitively entering and exiting jail. Dawn, for example, encompassed many women's view of disdaining prostitution:

They say this is the oldest profession in the book but I don't see how anybody – woman, dog, rat, any kind of personc – an even think about doing this [prostitution].

When discussing their dislike for prostitution, a common theme in the accounts of the participants was the feelings of shame and humiliation that are associated with prostitution. Caroline, for example, emphasized the painful feelings she experienced after engaging in the sexual work behaviors:

I hate them [solicitation behaviors] . Very much so. I feel ashamed and I don't feel clean. I feel dirty. People look at me when I'm walking down the street and people look at me; even if I'm not doing it that day, I still feel like people think that things about me. I don't like that no more.

In addition to feeling immoral after taking part in prostitution behaviors, many participants described making an effort to distance themselves, both mentally and emotionally, from potential clients when coming into contact with them. Some women hope to prevent feeling unclean by reportedly exercising a tactic of psychologically detaching themselves during their prostitution behaviors. These women described using mild forms of psychological dissociation in order to protect themselves from the emotional pain that results from turning-a-trick. Crystal, for example, elaborated on her attempts to mentally “check-out” during a date with a client:

No I don't enjoy it. [I] never have. [I] never have enjoyed that part [doing tricks] . I feel low. I feel dirty, I mean. When I trick, prostitute, however you want to put it, I'm in my own world.

Other participants find it difficult to mentally remove themselves from the situation, and therefore employ a different tactic: remaining emotionally disconnected, evidently in order to channel their hatred toward prostitution behaviors. In this method, women described desiring desire to know as little about the client as possible. The women seemingly hope to make no affective connection with the person, so that their behaviors seem less of a reality to them. Kelly, for example, illustrated these simultaneous feelings of hatred and detachment:

Yeah, I hate it [prostitution] . It sucks. I don't like anything about it. You just, you just think, speaking personally… you try not to look at someone. You don't want to know their name. You just want to do what you gotta do and go.

Addiction to prostitution's lifestyle

Although indicating a disdain for street-level prostitution, almost all of the participants described feeling as though they were addicted to the prostitution lifestyle. When using this term, however, they did so in a common-use of the word, not in a psychiatric sense of experience physiological or psychological dependence. Obviously, this finding seems paradoxical, since the women indicated disliking prostitution behaviors and the resultant humiliation it entailed for their lives. This seeming paradoxical principle may be true for any “addicts” who ultimately dislike the effects of addiction on themselves and their lifestyles. In this context, participants expressed feeling somewhat “hooked” on engaging in the lifestyle activities that they seemingly loathed. Two particular sub-themes emerged relating to the women's psychological addiction to prostitution's lifestyle. First, women commonly reported being involved with a fast-paced and unhealthy lifestyle. Amanda, for example, shared the sentiments of most participants in this regards:

I hate it [prostitution], but I like the lifestyle. I feel like that's my family out there. I have [a natural] family, but I don't associate with them because the lifestyle I choose. But sometimes I hate it. I'm tired I want to go to sleep. I come to jail, I hate it but it's like I'm addicted to the lifestyle. So, people think it's just the drug use but it's not. It's an addiction to the lifestyle, too.

Furthermore, participants cited the excitement and flexibility of the lifestyle as contributing factors to what they perceived as being a psychologically addicting lifestyle. The women reported enjoying the ability to work when and where they wanted, choosing their own clients. Additionally, participants reported having the perception that people on the street were their family, although, in reality, the women knew this percept did not square with reality. A combination of these perceived constructs led many of the women to view prostitution as both exhilarating and the rush they feel as part of their activities ultimately works against leaving the lifestyle. Jessica, for example, described the gust she routinely feels as a result of her lifestyle:

What's enjoyable? The thrill. Just, I don't know. After you do it for so long, it's like ‘Hey okay!’

However, they did not describe themselves as being sexually addicted or undergoing tolerance and withdrawal when the participants discontinue prostitution for time periods. Consequently, they did not meet the medical criteria for being addicted to prostitution in the sense of a formal psychiatric disorder.

A second sub-theme that emerged among participants regarding prostitution's psychological addicting lifestyle was that programs should be implemented specifically to treat the problem. Participants shared their beliefs that addictions to drugs (when this occurred) and the prostitution lifestyle needed separate treatment in order to aid in the effective exiting of the lifestyle. Participants indicated the necessity of such programs by sharing that, recovering from various drug addictions would not aid in their ability to overcome their perceived entrapment to the prostitution lifestyle. Kelly, for example, captured many of the women's desire to treat feeling hooked into the lifestyle:

You know, these girls they come in here with just a slap on the hand and go. They're not going to learn that way. I don't know. They have all these, AA/ NA, those kinds of programs, stop programs. “I can get you in a program for people who come in to talk [programs].” I mean they have “recovering alcoholics”, “recovering addicts”, “drug addicts”, but there can't be “recovering prostitutes”? You know what I mean? Does this sound stupid to you?

The women in our study view themselves wedged in a prostitution lifestyle from which they find it very difficult to just walk away. They know that drug addictions are challenging to overcome without special assistance and suggest that a formalized treatment program, with structured behavioral interventions such as AA or NA use, would be beneficial to them.

Need for social services to exit prostitution

Women in this study unanimously conveyed hopes of exiting the lifestyle altogether. Participants described feeling “fed-up” with their ways of life, being exhausted, desiring simply to survive, and wanting to mend relationships with friends, family, and children. These were indicated to be reasons for desiring to change their lifestyles. Participants seemingly did not envision spending the rest of their lives on the streets and engaged in the prostitution. Rather, they aspired to depart from their current lifestyle and live as a functional unit of society. Dawn, for example, conveyed an “I'm done” attitude:

I just hope I can say something to help somebody else. I've had many ass whoopins. I've been hit in the face with a baseball bat, my eye popped out, and I had five reconstructive surgeries… I hope I said something to help someone else. You know, I needed this. I needed to talk. You helped me; I'm done with this [prostitution].

Additionally, most women reported having the desire to change their lifestyles, but they also were unsure whether they could do it alone or even how even to begin the process. Participants shared they did not adequately know how to exist among the rest of society, the prostitution was the predominant lifestyle they had known during their adult years. For this reason, interviewees expressed feeling unable to escape the lifestyle without outsides resources such as family and some type of formal exit program. Donna, for example, shared her great hope, but recognized her need for help from others:

Like my counselors, I feel good spirits with them, so I know they'll probably help me this time. I've been in treatments where every counselor I would get I wouldn't feel good spirits or nothing. You know, they didn't know nothing about me, and they were rude-nasty for real. But I'm going to be alright this time. I want to help people. When I get through with NOVA, I want to do stuff that keeps my mind of drugs. I need to get well first and then I should be able to do it, but I need help. I can't do it by myself.

Other participants, who also wanted to change, did not have as much hope as Donna and explained that they did not know how to accomplish such a mammoth goal as recalibrating their lives. Amanda, for example, captured the uncertainty felt by these women:

I want to [clean up], It's just I don't know where to start. And I want to try, but it's hard.

These participants were not able to picture their lives apart from prostitution, despite the fact that they seemingly possessed cogent desires to exit the lifestyle. Formal programming was indicated to be a perceived need in order to help the women in our sample make the connections needed for achieving their goals. Although social support likely existed around them in various ways, the participants expressed an explicit desire for participation in scheduled planning through social services to help them overcome what they described as besetting habits and lifestyles.

Consistent with previous literature, our findings are congruent with Miller's (1993) finding that women involved in “street-level” prostitution face high levels of danger directly resulting from their work. In fact, participants surprisingly recounted instances of severe abuse with relatively little emotion. Temporary detachment had been implemented by our participants as regular means of coping with their daily stresses. Professionals working with women who are similar to individuals in our sample should give due consideration to those dynamics when writing treatment plans and seeking to amend participants' negative behavior patterns. That is, if women turning from prostitution hope to fully recover, then they likely will need to re-condition themselves against this seemingly ingrained tendency of emotional detachment.

As part of the article's discussion, we note that the prostitution behaviors do not meet a formal psychiatric diagnosis as an “addiction”. The purpose of the study is to provide phenomenological perspectives of the research participants, from the vantage points of their own words, constructs, and perceptions. By way of commentary on the findings, the participants did not describe themselves as being sexually addicted, in the sense of a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis. It is the overall lifestyle that they described as being “addictive,” rather than the actual sexual behaviors. When referencing the “addictive lifestyle” of prostitution, presumably, this entails a manner of enticing dress, locating potential clients, soliciting sales, generating repeat customers, and making fast money that likely is not taxed by the United States IRS. When the participants used the word “addicted”, they seemed to convey a sense of feeling “hooked” or “stuck” in their life situations. They wanted out – but struggled to achieve the freedom they desired. No dependence, tolerance, or withdrawal existed as is common with addiction from a formal medical perspective. Consequently, although we relate the word “addiction” in the present article, we do so since that is the term used by the research participants during the interviews; it is a vernacular use of addiction and not a psychiatric one. The women did not speak of being sex addicts and they generally did not enjoy engaging in the sexual acts for hire. To the research participants, being addicted to their respective lifestyles meant that they felt trapped in a situation that they found difficult to escape.

At the study's outset, we did not approach the research design to explicitly examine the matter of lifestyle addiction with the participants. As previously noted, this was an exploratory study in order to garner whatever perceptions existed and that the women were willing to relate to us. Further consideration should be given to the construct of “lifestyle addiction” as it relates to American female prostitutes. That is, since researchers possess this information, they can examine the construct specifically and in more detail, fleshing out further what we are only able to note as existing at this initial research stage.

Additionally, most women in our sample reported extensive instances of abuse. Consequently, prostitutes who wish to improve their lives and pursue recovery from all forms of addictions associated with the lifestyle will require specific aid in order to address these dynamics. For example, Burgess-Proctor (2008) found that most female victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) are hesitant to seek help, possibly resulting from similar, negative previous experiences. Burgess-Proctor also identifies help-seeking inhibitors and help-seeking promoters that affect the likelihood of women seeking needed aid when endangered, potentially associating these mechanisms with childhood experiences of violence or abuse. As women in our sample recounted their personal experiences of abuse, they admitted their foreknow-ledge of the potential danger involved with each sexual encounter. Congruent with O'Doherty (2011) , intuition exercised by the women in our present study seemingly remained a cogent factor affecting women's decisions.

However, when participants discussed the addiction-feelings they experienced toward the lifestyle of prostitution itself, one dominating aspect of this “addiction” was the perceived sense of control they reported experiencing. Although paradoxical to the reality of their continual recounting of the physical and sexual abuse that results from prostitution, participants nonetheless viewed themselves as being in control of the sexual situations they encountered. Lucas (2005) sheds light on this phenomena by reporting that, not only did most women in her sample regularly engaged in sex work by choice, but they also experienced a sense of temporary psychological satisfaction resulting from prostitution activities and lifestyle variables. Such feelings likely contribute significantly to participants' feelings of addiction to prostitution lifestyles. Identifying the specific elements of sex work that cause women to feel empowered may help females who feel trapped in the lifestyle better understand their own emotional responses and feelings of addiction, as well as recovery solutions that address this particular facet of their addiction. In short, the women must learn new avenues of developing healthy senses of self-efficacy.

Another seemingly contradictory finding in the present study was that women in our sample disliked prostitution, often describing themselves as feeling “dirty” as a result of their behavior. The addiction that participants reported consequently must have had strong, if not deciding, influence on the decisions of women in our study. Work by Blecher and Herr (2005) advance this construct when they report findings that street-level prostitutes generally emphasize short-term rewards, rather than delayed gratification. Similarly, they found that motivational factors which proved to be most powerful and to be linked as the most similar to actual behavioral outcomes were those that centered on more temporary outcomes. Resultantly, as society seeks to aid women recovering from prostitution, programs should be established that specifically address this tendency. That is, the perspectives of such women who wish to change their lifestyles must transition from short-term to long-term goals and rewards if they are to see long-term recovery.

And finally, social support seems to be a cogent psychological variable that transcends our findings. The prostitutes in our study consistently described themselves as feeling disconnected from others in ways that otherwise would promote social and psychological well being. We believe, therefore, that programs designed to assist recovering prostitutes must include social as well as individual interventions. Helping them connect with healthy groups – replacing their unhealthy present social circles – is needed for successful interventions. Likewise, family therapy, in a systemic tradition ( Carr, 2012 ), may be warranted – either in place of individual counseling or at least augmenting it. The psychological well being of these needed individuals, in part, seems tied to their needs for healthy psychological-social connections.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

All good research identifies and reports the limitations of a study ( Price & Murnan, 2004 ). The sample for the present study was drawn from women currently residing in a medium-sized city in the Midwest area of the United States. Future research should seek to replicate the study in similar cities located in other regions of the country. Additionally, future researchers should conduct parallel studies in the milieu of larger cities such as New York or Los Angeles, where women may face challenges unique to larger metropolitan environments. Additionally, our sample did not include a significant number of Hispanic or Asian minorities. Conducting the study in locales where the present results can be compared with those from persons reared in wide cross-sections of minority population milieus may prove insightful and will enhance the research's external validity ( Delmar, 2010 ).

Further, interviews with participants in our sample were conducted while women were in jail for prostitution-related activities. We suspect that time spent in jail provided participants with occasions for reflection on personal behavioral choices and resultant effects. While undergoing “reality checks” during incarceration, women may have been more prone to contemplation of life plans, such as raising their own children, than they would be at other periods during their lives. Moreover, the level of reflection, as well as content, may be qualitatively different when prostitutes are being interviewed in jail contexts compared to other interviewing contexts. Consequently, future researchers may wish to compare findings from interviews with prostitutes while in jail with responses of women while not undergoing legal penalties for their sexual behaviors.

As we noted earlier, the present study was designed to be exploratory in nature and, as such, we unearthed a research finding of women consistently noting what they conceptualized to be a “lifestyle addiction” of prostitution. Future researchers should design studies that focus specifically on this construct, having women explain their understandings of the concept, provide additional detail, and compare their behaviors against various diagnostic criteria. As such, we view the present article as reporting initial findings of what potentially could be a fertile research agenda with far more details available than what we are able to report her (given the interview data we collected).

Finally, future researchers may wish to conduct longitudinal studies where prostitutes' percepts are tracked over time. Various dynamics relating to their perspectives and behavior patterns could be more fully studied over the course of months, multiple years, or decades. Such research may obtain insight via longitudinal research designs when studying familial relationships, the effects of prostitution on women's children, as well as the long-term effects of prostitution on women's social relationships. Furthermore, most women in our sample described hopes for re-gaining custody of their children and someday raising them. Longitudinal studies would provide follow-up data regarding whether these aspirations became realties and under what conditions or contexts.

Funding Statement

Funding sources: No financial support was received for this study.

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Researching Prostitution and Sex Trafficking Comparatively

• Published: 22 August 2014
• Volume 12 , pages 81–91, ( 2015 )

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This article examines different types of comparative research designs as applied to either prostitution or sex trafficking. I first present several comparative approaches that are found to be deeply flawed either because of the problematic assumptions of the analysts or because the data provided are insufficient to support the conclusions drawn. I then review research designs that compare two to four cases in depth and have the potential to yield stronger evidence-based findings and richer theoretical insights. The article concludes by discussing a set of methodological issues that face researchers who conduct comparative research on sex work.

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Ethics as Process, Ethics in Practice: Researching the Sex Industry and Trafficking

Harm Reduction and Decriminalization of Sex Work: Introduction to the Special Section

Who Needs Evidence? Radical Feminism, the Christian Right and Sex Work Research in Northern Ireland

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The report ranked Cyprus as the “worst” in 2010, with 6.3 victims per 100,000 population. The three “best” nations (0.1 victims per 100,000) were Hungary, Lithuania, and Portugal. Hungary’s rank as one of the best anti-trafficking nations is perplexing because other sources rank it as a major source of trafficking within Europe.

Only sources in these languages were used: English, French, German, and Spanish.

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This section focuses specifically on comparative methods. General issues in researching sex work have been discussed by other scholars (e.g., Dewey and Zheng 2013 ; Sanders 2006 ; Shaver 2005 ).

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the COST conference on Comparing European Prostitution Policies, Athens, Greece, April 2014. I am grateful to Julia O’Connell Davidson and Lorraine Nencel for their helpful comments.

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The starting point for this book is the question of how we research sex for sale and the implications of the choices we make in terms of epistemology and ethics. Which dilemmas and ethical aspects need to be taken into account when producing qualitative data within a highly politicised and moral-infected realm? These two questions are exactly what Spanger and Skilbrei aim to unpack in this unusual interdisciplinary methodology book, Prostitution Research in Context . The book offers contributions from a number of scholars who, based on their reflections on their own research practice and the existing knowledge field, discuss ongoing methodological issues and challenges representative of international research on sex for sale. Some chapters deal explicitly with methodological dilemmas in research; others thematise the encounter between prostitution research and general texts on epistemology. Other chapters again actively engage with the ethical dilemmas that research on the topic of sex for sale can entail. The authors represent different disciplines, but share an interest in engaging in reflexive research practices informed by feminism and feminist epistemologies. An authoritative contribution to the field, this innovative volume will appeal to international scholars and students from across the social sciences and humanities in areas such as sociology, anthropology, criminology, media studies, feminist studies, human geography and history.

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Marlene Spanger is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark 　 May-Len Skilbrei is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, Norway

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Spanger & Skilbrei reach beyond disciplinary silos in posing novel epistemological questions that push researchers, practitioners, and services providers to reconsider status quo approaches to, and understandings of, transactional sex.　　By explicitly and fearlessly connecting political and theoretical issues, this edited collection offers a novel empirical contribution to an all-too-often polarized field of research. Susan C. Dewey, Associate Professor, Gender & Women's Studies, University of Wyoming, USA. For the first time, we have an interdisciplinary collection of work dedicated exclusively to sex work/prostitution research methodologies. In this inspiring, ground-breaking collection written by a number of key international scholars in the field, editors Spanger and Skilbrei urge us to think critically about the politics, power relations, and positionality in research processes and knowledge production about the sale of sex, and about how we can engage in informed and reflexive (feminist) research practices about the subject. A must read for anyone considering embarking upon sex work research. Kamala Kempadoo, Professor, Department of Social Science, York University, Canada. Co-editor of Global Sex Workers : Rights, Resistance and Redefinition, author of Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labour. The study of prostitution appears one of the most ethiclly challenging and contentious areas of research in the social sciences. Avoiding stereotyped representations of this complex and diverse area of study, this edited collection provides a balanced and timely assessment of the way that those researching prostitution are obliged to situate their studies in a wider political and social context. A must read for all those who are researching prostitution, and an important contribution to debates in feminist epistemology and methodology' Phil Hubbard, Professor of Urban Studies & Head of School, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research King’s College London.  

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Understanding and Applying Research on Prostitution

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Until recently, female prostitution was a subject that fanned many emotional fires but rarely kindled sound scholarly research. In the past three decades, this situation has begun to change, for three reasons. First, feminist scholars have pushed the door open on studies of this sensitive subject; second, public health concerns regarding the spread of sexually transmitted diseases have intensified in recent years; and third, politicians and policymakers have come to recognize the need for an effective strategy that deals with prostitution and its repercussions.

Recent NIJ-funded research [1] has shed some light on prostitution through studies of data on single and serial homicides of prostitutes. [2] This research reveals that many women enter prostitution as minors and use the income to support a drug habit or to stave off homelessness. Many suffered abuse as children. They have extremely high rates of on-the-job victimization [3] —possibly the highest homicide rate of any group of women studied thus far [4] —and a significant number of prostitute homicides remain unsolved. Researchers have also examined data from a study of prostitutes’ clients to find out who they are, why they solicit sex from prostitutes, and what attitudes they hold toward violence against women.

This body of data can be used to develop intervention programs for prostitutes, to determine the effectiveness of demand-side approaches in controlling prostitution (where officers arrest the clients instead of the prostitutes), and to help law enforcement officers conduct more focused homicide investigations.

The Study: Single vs. Serial Homicide Victims

In 2001, the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), a unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation that offers investigative support to State and local law enforcement agencies, noted an increase in the number of requests for consultation on serial homicides of prostitutes. In response to this trend, NIJ awarded a grant to researcher Jonathan Dudek to identify empirical distinctions between single and serial prostitute homicide victims. Dudek amassed data on 123 victims, those committing the homicide, and the crime scenes using closed investigative case files and NCAVC’s database.

Dudek found that the motives for a significant number of single homicides were nonsexual in nature, whereas serial homicides were almost exclusively sexually motivated. Despite this difference, there were few variations in the demographics and lifestyle choices of single and serial homicide victims. Most victims were in their late 20’s to early 30’s; 60 percent were African American. Almost all victims worked in high-crime areas and had been victimized both “on the job” (that is, while working as a prostitute) and in their personal lives. The large majority—85 percent—were involved in prostitution to support a drug addiction.

Profile of Single and Serial Murderers

Those who commit single and serial murders, like their victims, appeared to resemble each other on the surface. They both shared violent criminal backgrounds, substance use histories, and lifestyle choices. The sample of those committing the murders consisted of an equal proportion of African Americans and Caucasians who ranged in age from early to mid-30’s.

However, serial murderers differed from single murderers in three areas—sexual aggression, deviant sexual interests, and active sexual fantasies. Serial killers engaged more frequently in planning activities (such as bringing a victim to a preselected area, removing clothing from the victim’s body, and so forth), ritualistic behaviors, body mutilation, and removal of body parts.

Dudek’s findings were significant because they allowed NCAVC to supplement its existing body of knowledge with empirically based data. These data were used to formulate recommendations to help State and local law enforcement officers identify suspects and more efficiently and thoroughly investigate homicides.

The Demand Side—“Johns”

NIJ also sponsored a more extensive look at prostitutes’ clients—commonly known as “johns.” In 1997, an NIJ-funded study conducted by Martin A. Monto of the University of Portland explored the types of sex-related behavior characteristics of men who solicited prostitutes. The study examined the effects of the First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP) in San Francisco, California, and similar programs in other cities. These programs offered johns an opportunity to pay a fine and attend a daylong seminar. Participants were advised that no further legal action would be taken against them if they successfully avoided rearrest for a year. If there was a subsequent offense, however, the individual was prosecuted for the new offense and the original charge was reinstated.

Monto surveyed 1,291 men arrested for soliciting street prostitutes before they participated in FOPP and in similar johns programs in Las Vegas, Nevada; Portland, Oregon; and Santa Clara, California. He compared the data on why these men visit prostitutes, their attitudes regarding violence against women, and the consequences of conceiving of sexuality as a commodity.

Monto found that 72 percent of the men surveyed had attended some college. They ranged in age from 18 to 84 years, with a median age of 37, and were less likely to be married. Although their motives for seeking sex with a prostitute differed, there were similarities among certain groups. Married clients and college graduates were more likely to want a different kind of sex than they had with their regular partners. Steady or unmarried clients and non-college graduates reportedly felt shy and awkward when trying to meet women but did not feel intimidated by prostitutes.

Monto also explored the clients’ attitudes toward “rape myths”—that is, attitudes that have been used to support sexual violence against women. [5] Less than one-half of 1 percent of those surveyed indicated acceptance of all eight rape myths. On the other hand, 20 percent indicated acceptance of four or more items. Researchers believe that this latter group may be responsible for perpetrating violent acts against women for hire.

Next, Monto measured the degree to which clients regarded sexuality as a commercial commodity. [6] Monto found that the greater a client’s belief that women and sex were commercial products, the more frequently he would visit prostitutes. This mindset was also a strong predictor of the acceptance of rape myths, less frequent condom use with prostitutes, and a disinclination to view prostitution as a demeaning profession for women.

Researchers also conducted a limited recidivism study of those clients who participated in the San Francisco and Portland programs. Although both programs had a recidvism rate of about 2 percent, researchers acknowledge that conclusions about the programs’ efficacy in reducing recidivism were hampered by a lack of available baseline data for comparative purposes. The recidivism rate was not computed for men who were arrested but did not attend the program.

What the Future Holds

Since 2000, NIJ has funded two other studies that examine prostitute clients and the San Francisco FOPP more closely. The goals of the first study [7] are two-fold: to compare the recidivism rates for FOPP program participants and nonparticipants, and to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the diversion program. It is anticipated that the savings in prosecution costs, probation administration and monitoring time, and jail time will be substantial even if the recidivism effect is low. The goal of the second study is to ascertain the deterrent effect of arrest on street prostitute patrons. [8] If the study’s preliminary findings hold true—that arresting the clients of women prostitutes has a deterrent effect—this may provide evidence for a shift in law enforcement strategy.

NIJ’s research portfolio on prostitution will help build a body of knowledge that can be used by a wide range of professionals—public health officials, social workers, and law enforcement officers. Understanding the forces that drive a woman into prostitution and the drug dependencies that keep her there will go a long way toward developing intervention strategies for prostitutes and will help to stave off the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Additional data on the types of clients who solicit prostitutes and their attitudes toward them will also help to formulate more effective deterrence programs for johns and may help police identify potential suspects in prostitute homicide cases.

For More Information

• Dudek, J., When Silenced Voices Speak: An Exploratory Study of Homicide, final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC: 2001 (NCJ 198117), available at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/198117.pdf .
• Monto, M., Focusing on the Clients of Street Prostitutes: A Creative Approach to Reducing Violence Against Women, final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC: 1999 (NCJ 182860), available at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182860.pdfhttps://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182860.pdfhttps://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182860.pdf .

About This Article

This article appeared in NIJ Journal Issue 255 , November 2006.

[note 1] NIJ’s research portfolio centers on women involved in street prostitution, not on “call girls” or other off-street forms of prostitution, such as that found in massage parlors, exotic dance clubs, hotel bars, or escort services.

[note 2] A single homicide involves one victim; a serial homicide involves two or more victims who are murdered by the same individual.

[note 3] Kurtz, S., H. Surratt, J. Inciardi, and M. Kiley, “Sex Work and ‘Date’ Violence,” Violence Against Women 10 (4) (2004): 357–85; Davis, N., Prostitution: An International Handbook on Trends, Problems, and Policies, London: Greenwood Press, 1993; Hogard, C., and L. Finstad, Back Streets: Prostitution, Money, and Love, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992; Silbert, M.H., “Occupational Hazards of Street Prostitutes,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 8 (1981): 395–99.

[note 4] Potterat, J.J., D.D. Brewer, S.Q. Muth, R.B. Rothenburg, D.E. Woodhouse, J.B. Muth, H.K. Stites, and S. Brody, “Mortality in a Long-Term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women,” American Journal of Epidemiology 159 (8) (April 2004): 778–85.

[note 5] The eight rape myths Monto identified are: (1) A woman who goes to the home or apartment of a man on their first date implies that she is willing to have sex; (2) When women do not wear bras or wear short skirts and tight tops, they are asking for trouble; (3) In the majority of rapes, the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation; (4) If a girl engages in necking or petting and she lets things get out of hand, it is her own fault if her partner forces sex on her; (5) Women who get raped while hitchhiking get what they deserve; (6) A woman who is stuck-up and thinks she is too good to talk to guys on the street deserves to be taught a lesson; (7) Women who report a rape are lying because they are angry and want to get back at the man they accuse; and (8) Women who report rape after they discover they are pregnant invent a story to protect their reputation. Monto, M., Focusing on Clients of Street Prostitutes: A Creative Approach to Reducing Violence Against Women,  final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC: 1999 (NCJ 182860): 63, available at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182860.pdf .

[note 6] Prostitution is the offering of something of value in exchange for sexual activity. By definition, prostitution is a form of commodification, which in this context is the belief that women generally and/or sexual activity specifically are commercial products.

[note 7] NIJ award no. 2005–IJ–CX–0037. Evaluation of Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention FY 2003 Discretionary Funds Projects: The First Offender Prostitution Program. Findings are expected in late 2007.

[note 8] NIJ award no. 2003–IJ–CX–1036. Clients of Prostitute Women: Deterrence, Prevalence, Characteristics, and Violence. Findings are expected in late 2006.

About the author

Marilyn C. Moses is a Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice.

Cite this Article

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Prostitution Research Paper

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Prostitution is simultaneously a sexual and an economic institution, and it is also highly gendered. The majority of prostitutes are female, and an even larger majority of customers are male. While men’s prostitute use is widely tolerated, female prostitution is popularly viewed as a form of social and sexual deviance, and mainstream social scientists have traditionally reproduced such attitudes in their research on the topic. Feminist theorists, by contrast, have long been concerned to explore parallels between marriage, prostitution, slavery, and wage labor, as well as the sexual, political, and economic relations that underpin these institutions. They do not speak as one on the subject, however, and the division between feminists who are concerned with prostitution as a sexual institution and feminists who approach it first and foremost as a form of economic activity is particularly sharp. This research paper provides a brief overview of prostitution in the contemporary world and highlights the theoretical and actual problems it poses for gender scholarship.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, 1. prostitution: a stigmatized and criminalized activity.

A profoundly negative stigma is almost universally attached to prostitute women. Religious thinking on men’s prostitute use varies, but there is no major world religion that actively sanctions female prostitution and, in secular societies, ‘scientific’ thinking has done little to displace traditional attitudes. Mainstream medical, psychological, psychoanalytic, and sociological research on the topic has generally assumed that while men’s prostitute use is based on natural, biologically determined sexual drives, women who prostitute are somehow abnormal, unnatural, a threat to public health and order. Prostitution law varies from country to country and even within individual nation states, but typically enshrines this kind of stigma by treating female prostitutes as a distinct class of persons, separate from other workers and/or women in terms of their rights to protection, privacy, and/or self-determination (Walkowitz 1980, Bindman 1997).

Law enforcement almost invariably focuses upon female prostitution, ignoring men’s prostitute use (often also male prostitution), and is generally informed by one of two basic models: prohibition/abolition, or regulation/registration. The prohibitionist model has historically led to an emphasis on controlling public manifestations of prostitution through the criminalization of (usually street working) prostitute women. The regulation/registration model, which legalizes prostitution providing it takes place in licensed brothels or designated geographical zones, has been associated with a variety of civil rights violations, such as requirements for prostitute women to register with the police and/or other authorities, have compulsory health checks, and so on. In some countries, there have been moves to deregulate prostitution either explicitly or by default, a shift which is taking place largely for reasons of ‘financial exigency, prosecutor indifference, court deadlocks, and resistance to the overreach of the criminal law among some social sectors’ (Davis 1993, p. 8).

2. The Economic Significance Of Prostitution

Because female prostitution is ideologically and legally construed as a form of deviance, states do not officially recognize or regulate prostitution as an economic sector like any other. It is therefore extremely difficult to obtain accurate data on the size and earnings of the sex trade. However, research indicates that sex commerce is a significant feature of economic life in many nations, regardless of their overall level of economic development. Studies suggest that, for example, in London, prostitution generates around £200 million annually (Matthews 1997); that in New Zealand, almost one in every 150 women aged between 18 and 40 is employed in some form of sex work (Lichtenstein 1999); and that in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the sex sector accounts for between 2 percent and 14 percent of gross domestic product (Lim 1998). Research further suggests that a fairly consistent set of factors underpin prostitution labor markets. Gender discriminatory social practices are structural ‘push’ factors in economically developed and underdeveloped nations alike (Davis 1993).

As part of an unofficial and often criminalized economic sector, prostitution is frequently connected with corruption, organized crime, and drug abuse, but it is often simultaneously integrated into mainstream economic structures, such as the entertainment and the tourism industries (Lim 1998). This draws attention to the increasingly international nature of the sex industry.

3. Global Politics And Markets And Prostitution

Prostitution is affected by global politics and market trends in three main ways. First, there are countries in which the development of the sex sector has been directly shaped by the military and economic interests of external powers. Thailand, for example, was used for ‘Rest and Recreation’ by the US military in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and a highly sexualized entertainment sector developed to meet demand from legions of young men. Western financial institutions and businesses soon recognized that such an entertainment industry was also suited to serve one particular segment of the long haul tourist market, and economic initiatives based on a 1975 World Bank report ‘led to what is routinely described today as a $4billion-a-year business involving fraternal relationships among airlines, tour operators, and the masters of the sex industry’ (Bishop and Robinson 1998, p. 9). Similar developments have occurred elsewhere in South East Asia, as a result of either US or Japanese military or economic interventions in the region.

Sex commerce in poorer countries has also been affected by a set of linkages between international debt, price fluctuations in global commodity markets, economic development policy, and prostitution. Since the 1970s, world financial institutions have encouraged indebted nations to respond to economic crisis by developing tourism and/or ‘nontraditional’ export industries such as gold, diamonds, and timber. One side effect of such development policies is the creation of highly concentrated, effective demand for prostitution: affluent tourists seeking ‘entertainment’ and predominantly male, migrant workers in isolated mining and logging regions with cash to spend on ‘recreation.’ Meanwhile, structural adjustment measures have expanded the prostitution labor market. It is women and children who have been most adversely affected by the sudden introduction of cash economies into what were formerly subsistence economies, currency devaluations and concomitant falls in the price of labor, and the redirection of subsidies away from social spending and basic commodities towards debt servicing. In such climates, prostitution has often become the best or only economic alternative for large numbers of women and teenagers (Chant and McIlwaine 1995, Clift and Carter 1999, Kempadoo 1999). Third, the sex trade is international in the sense that many of those working in prostitution have either voluntarily migrated in order to prostitute or have been trafficked by third parties for that purpose. Migrant prostitutes are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by third parties and, as both illegal migrants and prostitute women, particularly likely to be denied legal protection and civil rights (Bindman 1997).

Ideological, as well as economic and political factors underpin the globalization of sex commerce. Racist discourses, which typically construct the ‘Other’ as sexually debased and/or exotic, have long fueled desire for ‘racially’ Other prostitutes and continue to shape demand today (Shrage 1994).

4. The Diversity Of Prostitution

Prostitution varies enormously in terms of its social organization and the power relations it involves. In virtually every country of the world, hierarchies exist within both female and male prostitution (West 1992, Aggleton 1999). At their apex are independent, self-employed adult prostitutes who exercise a relatively high level of control in transactions with clients and whose earnings are relatively high. At their base are individuals who gain little or no financial reward from their prostitution and exercise little, if any, control over it (including control over condom use). This may be because they are physically forced into a given work regime by a third party pimp or brothel-keeper, but it may also be because extreme economic and social marginalization, and/or youth and/or drug addiction renders them horribly powerless within transactions.

Between the two extremes are prostitutes who either work independently or enter into some form of employment relation with a third party. The degree of control they exercise over whether, when, how often, and on what terms they prostitute varies according to a range of factors, including their level of economic desperation; the contractual form of the prostitute– client exchanges they enter into; and the specific legal, institutional, social, political, and ideological context in which they prostitute. There are, for example, settings in which prostitution law so heavily penalizes independent prostitution that it effectively operates as a pressure on prostitutes to enter and remain in third party controlled prostitution no matter how exploitative the third party may be. Equally, in contexts where certain social groups (for instance, women, children, homosexuals, migrants, particular ‘castes’ or racialized minorities) are generally devalued, and/or denied full juridical subjecthood, and/or denied independent access to welfare support, their vulnerability to prostitution and to third party exploitation and abuse within it is increased. It should also be noted that people come to prostitution as individuals of a certain age and with particular personal histories and experience, and this leaves some more open to exploitation and at higher risk of violence and sexually transmitted disease than others (O’Connell Davidson 1998).

5. Conceptualizing Prostitution

One approach to the task of conceptualizing prostitution is to examine how it simultaneously resembles and differs from other social institutions. In prostitution, as in the institution of marriage, the sexual and the economic are conjoined. Unlike marriage, however, prostitution does not construct long term, mutual, or diffuse relations of dependency between individuals and their kin. Instead, sexual interaction between prostitute and client takes place on the understanding that some immediate economic benefit will accrue to either the prostitute or a third party as a result, and the client’s obligations are thus discharged by payment in cash or kind. To this extent, relations within prostitution resemble market relations.

However, prostitution does not involve any ordinary commodity exchange. The client does not wish to purchase the disembodied means to an orgasm, a ‘thing’ that can be detached from the prostitute’s person. Rather clients part with money and/or other material benefits in order to secure certain powers of sexual command over the person of the prostitute. Thus, although prostitution is often thought of as the exchange of sex or sexual services for money and/or other benefits, it is better conceptualized as an institution which allows certain powers over one person’s body to be exercised by another. In this sense, prostitution has something in common with slavery, wage labor, and relations between buyers and self-employed sellers of services. All are institutions through which certain powers of command over the person are transferred from one individual to another, conferring a right upon the client/slave holder/employer/buyer to require that the prostitute/slave/worker/seller acts in ways that she/he would not otherwise choose to act.

Yet the relationship between prostitute and client differs from that between slave and slave holder or worker and employer in crucial respects. Not only is it generally brief and transitory, but also, clients enter into it as consumers, not producers. Clients do not depend upon prostitutes for their economic well being in the way that slave-holders and employers depend upon slaves and workers for their material existence. And even where the prostitute is self-employed, the prostitute–client exchange is made unlike other exchanges between independent sellers and purchasers of services by the social meanings that are popularly attached to sexuality.

In monetary economies, sexual and economic relations are typically imagined, explained, and justified in very different ways. The products of human labor, human labor power, sometimes even human beings themselves, have been and are imagined as commodities to be bought and sold on the basis of rational economic calculation and/or in pursuit of status and social prestige. Human sexual interaction, by contrast, is generally regulated and given meaning through reference to premarket or nonmarket ideas, such as those pertaining to honor, shame and duty, and/or romantic love, and/or recreation, pleasure, and desire. Prostitution thus occupies a troubled and troubling space between two quite different symbolic domains. It does not readily fit into popularly understood categories of ‘sex’ or ‘work,’ and this tension has been central to much feminist debate on the subject.

6. Feminist Debates On Prostitution

Though sharing a common concern with the welfare of prostitute women, feminists are often deeply divided on the question of whether to view prostitution as a sexual or an economic institution. For ‘radical’ feminists, who foreground the sexual domination of women by men in their analyses of women’s political subordination, prostitution is the unambiguous embodiment of male oppression. In this view, as a sexual institution, prostitution reduces women to bought objects, allows men temporary, but direct, control over the prostitute, and increases their existing social control over all women by affirming their masculinity and patriarchal rights of access to women’s bodies. For such commentators, prostitution is always and necessarily damaging to women, there can be no distinction between ‘forced’ and ‘free choice’ prostitution, and in tolerating, regulating, or legalizing prostitution, states permit the repeated violation of human rights to dignity and sexual autonomy (Barry 1995, Jeffreys 1997).

Feminists who adopt a sex workers’ rights perspective generally reject the idea that prostitution is intrinsically or essentially degrading, and view links between prostitution and patriarchal domination as contingent, rather than necessary. Treating prostitution as an economic institution, they make a strong distinction between ‘free choice’ prostitution by adults and all forms of forced and child prostitution. While they believe the latter should be outlawed, they hold the former to be a type of paid work, a job like any other. Since sex workers’ rights feminists view free choice prostitution as a mutual voluntary exchange, they see state actions which criminalize or otherwise penalize those adults who make an individual choice to enter prostitution as a denial of human rights to self-determination (see Nagel 1997).

Because hierarchies exist within prostitution in terms of earnings, working conditions, vulnerability to violence and exploitation, and autonomy as regards specifying, limiting, and retracting from contracts with clients, these two very different interpretations of prostitution can each be partially supported empirically. Radical feminists point to research which indicates that around the world, the average age of entry into prostitution is very low (often under 18 years); that it is often precipitated by the experience of rape, sexual assault, and/or incest; and that the experience of prostitution can be extremely damaging psychologically, as well as associated with drug and solvent abuse, various forms of sexual and physical violence, and suicide (Hoigard and Finstad 1992, Kelly et al. 1995). Radical feminism’s emphasis on a link between prostitution and systems of patriarchal domination is supported by the strong historical and contemporary association between the military and organized prostitution, while the persistence of highly abusive and slavery-like practices within prostitution and the significant presence of children aged between 12 and 18 in mainstream prostitution, even where prostitution is legally regulated rather than proscribed, lends further credence to a view of prostitution as a hugely problematic institution (Ennew 1986, Enloe 1989)

Sex workers’ rights feminists point out that slavery- like practices and child labor persist in other industries, and that historically, such abuses have been most successfully addressed through collective struggle for workers’ political representation, international conventions guaranteeing minimum rights to various groups of workers persons, national employment laws outlawing abusive practices, and so on. They cite research which suggests that prohibitionist legislation increases, rather than reduces, prostitutes’ vulnerability to violence, third party coercion, and extortion, and emphasize empirical studies in which adult women and men in prostitution describe themselves as perfectly content with their chosen occupation (Bindman 1997, Kempadoo and Doezema 1998).

Though certain feminist commentators remain rig- idly wedded to a view of prostitution as either work or sexual violence, many theorists and activists (including some feminist abolitionists and sex workers’ rights feminists) place a growing emphasis on the need to develop analyses of prostitution which can embrace its diversity and its particularity as both a sexual and an economic institution (see, for example, Shrage 1994, Chapkis 1997, O’Connell Davidson 1998).

Bibliography:

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129 Human Trafficking Research Topics & Essay Examples

Are you searching for the best human trafficking research topics? Look no further! On this page, you’ll find human trafficking topics for your research paper, speech, and many other writing assignments. Read on to discover the most interesting topics on human trafficking issues and essay examples!

🏆 Best Human Trafficking Essay Examples

✍️ human trafficking essay topics for college, 👍 good human trafficking essay topics, 🎓 human trafficking topics for research paper, ❓ human trafficking research questions, 🔎 research questions about human trafficking, 📝 human trafficking argumentative essay topics.

• Human Trafficking from Perspectives of Deontology, Utilitarianism and Egoism
• Human Trafficking: Ethical Issues
• The Victims of Human Trafficking
• Human Trafficking – Modern-Day Slavery
• Human Trafficking: Risk and Causes
• Human Trafficking in Thailand: Social Work Practice
• Effects of Human Trafficking on the Victims
• Prostitution vs. Human Trafficking Many people believe that making prostitution a legal activity will help raise the status of prostitutes and promote their protection.
• Human Trafficking and Psychological Impacts Human trafficking amounts to a crime against humanity. The perpetrators of the felony infringe on the rights of their victims.
• Child Exploitation as a Form of Human Trafficking This is a qualitative review of child trafficking. It examines the background of the problem, provides a literature review, and an analysis of the theories and policies.
• Human Trafficking Through a Historical Lens Human trafficking is a global issue that involves coercing a person to provide services or labor forcefully, violating their human rights.
• Human Trafficking and Its Use in Historical Lens The essay examines the historical origins and current impact of human trafficking, emphasizing the need for education and awareness to combat this widespread problem.
• The Role of Online Games in Human Trafficking Online games such as Roblox and Metaverse act as platforms human traffickers use to lure children and even adults.
• Human Trafficking: International Human Rights International human rights law defines human trafficking as the violation of an individual’s right to liberty through appropriation of their legal personality, labor and humanity.
• Human Trafficking as Violation of Human Rights Human trafficking is a heinous issue that is very serious and dangerous for our society. It is widely known that human trafficking has become an expanding issue across the world.
• Human Trafficking: Term Definition In January 2009, a raid by Brazil police led to a rescue of more than 4,500 slaves who had been entrapped in ranches and plantations in remote areas of the country.
• Human Trafficking and Illegal Immigration Human trafficking is a problem which seems to be concealed and even ignored in the United States’ society because of a lack of the appropriate discussion.
• The Shadow Effect of Human Trafficking In light of the difficulties inherent in combating and resolving human trafficking in Indonesia, Amelia et al. provide a comprehensive study and analysis of the issue.
• Human Trafficking: A Comparison of UNODC Reports The paper compares the 2012 and 2020 UNODC reports on human trafficking to find out changes in the research methods and outcomes of the investigations.
• Human Trafficking: Risk Factors and Victimization Data Human trafficking is a crime immoral and unethical at its core. Victims of human trafficking are likely to be sexually, physically, and emotionally abused.
• Human Trafficking as a Practice Problem Victims of modern-day slavery are exploited in every region of the world, forced to work or provide paid sexual services in real-life production environments and on the Internet.
• NGO Involvement in Human Trafficking Information Dissemination The research project aims to address the prevalence of human trafficking as a public health issue by exploring the potential opportunities.
• Human Trafficking and Poverty Issues in Modern Society The problem of human trafficking affects people all over the world, which defines the need for a comprehensive approach to this issue from the criminology perspective.
• Human Trafficking and Poverty Discussion This paper synthesize information on human trafficking and poverty by providing an annotated bibliography of relevant sources.
• Human Trafficking in the United States Project Design and Implementation The research project aims to delve into the complex issue of human trafficking in the United States and the vulnerable populations targeted.
• The Internet Role in Human Trafficking This essay will argue that the problem of Internet use for human trafficking is unsolvable because there are not enough ways to control these processes.
• Human Trafficking and Prostitution: Religious Perspective The implementation of an ideal religion is possible in the context of human trafficking and forced prostitution.
• Investigating the Nexus Between Human Trafficking and National Security The research paper investigates the nexus between human trafficking and national security from an economics perspective.
• Biological Theory Applied to Human Trafficking This essay aims to discuss how the use of biological theory in criminology can help explain the phenomenon of human trafficking and the role of poverty in it.
• The Case of Human Trafficking in China The Chinese government should distinguish between prostitution and human trafficking to put effective procedures for identifying victims of forced marriages.
• Human Trafficking and Forced Prostitution Human trafficking and its connection with prostitution remain a controversial topic, as do their perception and possible remedies.
• Research on Human Trafficking in Arkansas Although the rates of child sex trafficking in Arkansas remain high, the authorities at all levels are concentrated on solving this problem.
• International Organizations Battling Human Trafficking This essay aims to analyze the role of NGOs and IGOs in the recent transnational measures that combat human trafficking.
• Data and Research on Human Trafficking One of the emerging issues regarding criminology is human trafficking that is conducted through organized crime.
• How COVID-19 Affected Human Trafficking This paper presents and supports the argument that the COVID-19 has led to an increase in human trafficking activities.
• Detailed Analysis of Human Trafficking The persuasive paper presented below gives a detailed analysis of this predicament and how stakeholders can be involved to transform the current situation.
• Human Trafficking Concerning Minorities in the U.S. The issue of human trafficking concerning minorities and the measures of addressing the problem and dealing with will be discussed in this research paper.
• Human Trafficking and Legal Aspects In the present paper, the components of human trafficking, threatened populations, and legal aspects are presented and analyzed in detail.
• Nursing Code of Ethics in the Human Trafficking Victim Treatment When nurses face the settings in which their patients are the victims of severe public health issues, it is their explicit responsibility to take action.
• The Case of Veronica: Human Trafficking This paper discusses the severe problem of human trafficking, as it adversely affects millions of individuals regardless of their gender, age, and nationality.
• Human Trafficking: A Threat to All This essay analyzes the three mentioned types of human trafficking, proving that they are a threat to all of humanity, as it creates inequality and dependency on certain people.
• Human Trafficking and Health Care Professional Preventing human trafficking by healthcare professionals largely depends on the government to develop registration purposely meant to make trafficking of people illegal.
• Christian Foundations in Government: Human Trafficking Human trafficking or trafficking in human beings is defined as the movement of people without their consent, usually by force for the intention of sexual or labor exploitation.
• The Role of Technology in Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are significant problems in contemporary society that constitute a violation of human rights.
• Human Trafficking and Ethical Behavior Breaches Ethical theories such as deontology and utilitarianism guide human beings to condone specific actions such as human trafficking because they are unacceptable.
• The Problem of Human Trafficking in America The human trafficking business thrives because judges are unable to prosecute traffickers. The nature of the crime requires that women who are victims be witnesses and give testimony in courts.
• Human Trafficking: National and International Challenges Social workers must respond to any humanitarian crisis domestically and abroad. The international issue of human trafficking and its impact requires the attention of social workers
• Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking and Poverty Be it through the sexual enslavement of girls or trafficking of males for forced labor, slavery has had a tremendous impact on modern society.
• Human Trafficking in Florida Law Human trafficking is defined by Florida law as modern-day slavery manifested in the form of exploitative labor, transportation, and harboring of individuals.
• Human Trafficking and Its Signs in Patients The problem of human trafficking is a health hazard for the victims. Places in which human trafficking occur vary depending on the purpose of this modern day slavery.
• Human Trafficking and Unethical Business in the US Over the years, human trafficking in the United States has been ranked as one of the significant challenges facing the federal government.
• Human Trafficking in the USA Human trafficking has been defined as the transportation, transfer or recruitment of human beings, by use of deception, abduction, coercion, and fraud.
• The Most Shocking Aspects of Human Trafficking The issue of human trafficking can be discussed as challenging because there are opinions that this problem cannot be overcome or addressed effectively.
• Human Trafficking Problem in Society Human trafficking is defined as the process through which human beings are recruited, transferred or received through forceful means with the intention of exploiting them.
• What is Human Trafficking? This paper will set out to define human trafficking and highlight some of the factors why it continues to occur today. The paper will discuss the effects of human trafficking.
• Human Trafficking: Current State and Counteracts Human trafficking involves transportation of people inside their countries and abroad to be sexually exploited and become source of cheap unskilled labor in the developed states.
• Human Trafficking and Public Service Announcements Public Service Announcements project will attempt to educate youth, especially young females, about safety rules to reduct human trafficking on local and national levels.
• “The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed” by Anthony M. DeStefano “The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed” by Anthony M. DeStefano is an overview of American government’s efforts to combat the human trafficking.
• Women’s Rights Organizations and Human Trafficking
• Human Trafficking and the Child Welfare Population in Florida
• The Link Between Human Trafficking and Cambodia
• Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery, and Economic Exploitation
• Illegal Adoption and Human Trafficking Impact on the US
• The Violent and Perverse System of Human Trafficking
• Human Trafficking Throughout South Africa
• The Differences and Similarities Between Human Trafficking and Slavery
• Human Trafficking From Latin America to Canada
• The Trafficking and Forms of Human Trafficking
• Islamic Law and Human Trafficking in Saudi Arabia
• Human Trafficking and the Trade of Human Sex Trafficking
• Medical Care for Human Trafficking Victims
• The Human Trafficking and the Saga of 53 Indian Nationals
• Human Trafficking Throughout the United States
• The Horrors and Statistics on Human Trafficking in the United States
• Human Trafficking and Its Effects on the Criminal Justice System
• Connections Between Human Trafficking and Environmental Destruction
• The Human Trafficking Aspect of the Military-Industrial
• Human Trafficking Has Increased Greatly With Globalization
• What Are Five Warning Signs of Human Trafficking?
• Human Trafficking and Why Do They Call It Modern-Day Slavery?
• Human Trafficking vs. Prostitution: Is There a Difference?
• Who Is the Biggest Human Trafficking in the World?
• What Is the Most Common Place for Human Trafficking?
• What Are the Top Ten Cities for Human Trafficking?
• What Is the Most Common Age of Human Trafficking Victims?
• Who Is Most at Risk for Human Trafficking?
• How Do You Escape Human Trafficking?
• How Do You Know if You Are Being Targeted for Human Trafficking?
• What Happens to Human Trafficking Victims After?
• What Does the Blade Mean in Human Trafficking?
• What Is the Rate of Human Trafficking in the US?
• What Country Has the Highest Human Trafficking Rate?
• Where Does US Rank in Human Trafficking?
• Where Is Human Trafficking Most Common in Europe?
• What Are the Top Three Countries for Human Trafficking?
• How Many People Are Victims of Human Trafficking in Europe?
• What Are the Three Types of Human Trafficking?
• Is Human Trafficking Common in Africa?
• Why Does Human Trafficking Happen in Africa?
• What Country Has the Most Human Trafficking in 2021?
• Is Romania Known for Human Trafficking?
• Why Is There So Much Human Trafficking in Eastern Europe?
• How Do Human Traffickers Mark Their Victims?
• What Are the Statistics on Human Trafficking of Children?
• How Common Is Human Trafficking in Japan?
• Is There Human Trafficking in Tokyo?
• Where Is Human Trafficking Most Common in the Middle East?
• How Does War Contribute to Human Trafficking?
• How has globalization affected the prevalence of human trafficking?
• What are the most common recruitment tactics of traffickers?
• What population groups are the most vulnerable to human trafficking?
• How do different countries combat human trafficking?
• How do social networks facilitate human trafficking?
• What is the connection between human trafficking and other organized crime types?
• How does police corruption contribute to human trafficking?
• What are the challenges in prosecuting human trafficking cases?
• What social and cultural attitudes perpetuate human trafficking?
• How can education programs help prevent human trafficking?
• The impact of decriminalizing prostitution on human trafficking.
• Can temporary work visas be effective in reducing human trafficking?
• Should human trafficking victims be treated as criminals or supported?
• Human traffickers: do they deserve harsher punishment?
• Should human trafficking be considered a form of terrorism?
• Do public awareness campaigns help prevent human trafficking?
• Demand-side vs. supply-side interventions to combat human trafficking.
• Is the private sector responsible for addressing human trafficking?
• Is human trafficking a domestic or international issue?
• The role of immigration policies in human trafficking.

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Prostitution in the Philippines

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Russel Ann Arabit

Ronald Weitzer

Donna M Hughes

Petro Kurmaiev

The article analyzes the main approaches to the interpretation of prostitution from the legal, economic, sociological, psychological, sexological and religious points of view. The author formulates its own definition, in which prostitution is considered as a form of entrepreneurial activity for the provision of sexual services on a paid basis, aimed at meeting sexual needs. The basic preconditions that are necessary for the prostitution to become the signs of entrepreneurial activity are presented: availability of commodity-money relations; religious and social tolerance; sexual freedom; sexual need. It is offered to allocate three main groups of mutually conditioned motives to engaging in prostitution: psychological-emotional, image and socio-economic. It is noted that for today's Ukraine socio-economic motives are dominant.

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)

IJRASET Publication

Atmaja a poor Indian girl was born in broken family. Her father was alcoholic and use to abuse and beat her mother every day. Her mother instead of consoling her took out all anger and frustration on her telling her that she was an unwanted child and should have died the day she was born.

Olayinka Olaniyan

Prostitution is the business or practice of engageng in sexual relations in exchange for payment[1][2] or some other benefit. Prostitution is sometimes described as commercial sex.

Sudhansu Dash

Prostitution is the system that commodifies and dehumanizes the bodies of the woman for the use and profit of the man. The term serves as an adjective for any sexually transgressing woman, seen as sexual beings representing uncontrolled sexuality. Prostitution is understood as a sexual act involving women. Today it is an object of intense mainstreaming campaign that is working for social and political acceptance of the highly profitable industry of sex. Prostitution right groups in India however argue that prostitution is the exchange of sexual favors between partners within a relationship for earning money, which is one of the various ways of expressing and carrying out human sexuality.

Springer eBooks

Paolo Ruspini

The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Aimee Wodda

This entry provides a thorough overview of the various types of act that fall under the umbrella term “prostitution”; it describes various forms of solicitation and the individuals engaged in these exchanges; and it offers descriptive statistics. The criminal justice response to prostitution is examined, with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of arguments surrounding criminalization, decriminalization, and legalization. The summary concludes with a review of the global context of sex trafficking.

Muyiwa Babalola

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Roadmap details how to improve exoplanet exploration using the JWST

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The launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 kicked off an exciting new era for exoplanet research, especially for scientists looking at terrestrial planets orbiting stars other than our sun. But three years into the telescope’s mission, some scientists have run into challenges that have slowed down progress.

In a recent paper published in Nature Astronomy , the TRAPPIST-1 JWST Community Initiative lays out a step-by-step roadmap to overcome the challenges they faced while studying the TRAPPIST-1 system by improving the efficiency of data gathering to benefit the astronomy community at large.

“A whole community of experts came together to tackle these complex cross-disciplinary challenges to design the first multiyear observational strategy to give JWST a fighting chance at identifying habitable worlds over its lifetime,” says Julien de Wit, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and one of the lead authors of the paper.

Two-for-one deal

Located 41 light years from Earth, the TRAPPIST-1 system with its seven planets presents a unique opportunity to study a large system with multiple planets of different compositions, similar to our own solar system.

“It's a dream target: You have not one, but maybe three, planets in the habitable zone, so you have a way to actually compare in the same system,” says René Doyon from the Université de Montréal, who co-led the study with de Wit. “There are only a handful of well-characterized temperate rocky planets for which we can hope to detect their atmosphere, and most of them are within the TRAPPIST-1 system.”

Astronomers like de Wit and Doyon study exoplanet atmospheres through a technique called transmission spectroscopy, where they look at the way starlight passes through a planet’s potential atmosphere to see what elements are present. Transmission spectra are collected when the planet passes in front of its host star.

The planets within the TRAPPIST system have short orbital periods. As a result, their transits frequently overlap. Transit observation times are usually allotted in five-hour windows, and when scheduled properly, close to half of these can catch at least two transits. This “two-for-one” saves both time and money while doubling data collection.

Stellar contamination

Stars are not uniform; their surfaces can vary in temperature, creating spots that can be hotter or cooler. Molecules like water vapor can condense in cool spots and interfere with transmission spectra. Stellar information like this can be difficult to disentangle from the planetary signal and give false indications of a planet’s atmospheric composition, creating what’s known as “stellar contamination.” While it has often been ignored, the improved capabilities of the JWST have revealed the challenges stellar contamination introduces when studying planetary atmospheres.

EAPS research scientist Ben Rackham ran into these challenges when they derailed his initial PhD research on small exoplanets using the Magellan Telescopes in Chile. He’s now seeing the same problem he first encountered as a graduate student repeating itself with the new JWST data.

“As we predicted from that earlier work with data from ground-based telescopes, the very first spectral signatures we're getting with JWST don't really make any sense in terms of a planetary interpretation,” he says. “The features are not what we would expect to see, and they change from transit to transit.”

Rackham and David Berardo, a postdoc in EAPS, have been working with de Wit on ways to correct for stellar contamination using two different methods: improving models of stellar spectra and using direct observations to derive corrections .

“By observing a star as it rotates, we can use the sensitivity of JWST to get a clearer picture of what its surface looks like, allowing for a more accurate measuring of the atmosphere of planets that transit it,” says Berardo. This, combined with studying back-to-back transits as proposed in the roadmap, collects useful data on the star that can be used to filter out stellar contamination from both future studies and past ones.

Beyond TRAPPIST-1

The current roadmap was born from the efforts of the TRAPPIST JWST Community Initiative to bring together separate programs focused on individual planets, which prevented them from leveraging the optimal transit observation windows.

“We understood early on that this effort would 'take a village' to avoid the efficiency traps of small observation programs , ” says de Wit. “Our hope now is that a large-scale community effort guided by the roadmap can be initiated to yield deliverables at a timely pace.” De Wit hopes that it could result in identifying habitable, or inhabitable, worlds around TRAPPIST-1 within a decade.

Both de Wit and Doyon believe that the TRAPPIST-1 system is the best place for conducting fundamental research on exoplanet atmospheres that will extend to studies in other systems. Doyon thinks that “the TRAPPIST-1 system will be useful not only for TRAPPIST-1 itself, but also to learn how to do very precise correction of stellar activity which will be beneficial to many other transmission spectroscopy programs also affected by stellar activity.”

“We have within reach fundamental and transforming answers with a clear roadmap to them,” says de Wit. “We just need to follow it diligently.” 

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Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence

Title: spreadsheetllm: encoding spreadsheets for large language models.

Abstract: Spreadsheets, with their extensive two-dimensional grids, various layouts, and diverse formatting options, present notable challenges for large language models (LLMs). In response, we introduce SpreadsheetLLM, pioneering an efficient encoding method designed to unleash and optimize LLMs' powerful understanding and reasoning capability on spreadsheets. Initially, we propose a vanilla serialization approach that incorporates cell addresses, values, and formats. However, this approach was limited by LLMs' token constraints, making it impractical for most applications. To tackle this challenge, we develop SheetCompressor, an innovative encoding framework that compresses spreadsheets effectively for LLMs. It comprises three modules: structural-anchor-based compression, inverse index translation, and data-format-aware aggregation. It significantly improves performance in spreadsheet table detection task, outperforming the vanilla approach by 25.6% in GPT4's in-context learning setting. Moreover, fine-tuned LLM with SheetCompressor has an average compression ratio of 25 times, but achieves a state-of-the-art 78.9% F1 score, surpassing the best existing models by 12.3%. Finally, we propose Chain of Spreadsheet for downstream tasks of spreadsheet understanding and validate in a new and demanding spreadsheet QA task. We methodically leverage the inherent layout and structure of spreadsheets, demonstrating that SpreadsheetLLM is highly effective across a variety of spreadsheet tasks.

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arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Iqbal earns runner-up in privacy tech award

A research paper by Umar Iqbal, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named runner-up for the Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

The award is presented annually to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation or deployment of privacy-enhancing technologies. It is awarded at the annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium.

Iqbal’s paper, “ Tracking, profiling, and ad targeting in the Amazon smart speaker ecosystem ,” was first presented at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference in Montreal in October, where it received the best paper award. The paper provided insight into what information is captured by smart speakers; how it is shared with other parties; and how it is used by such parties, allowing consumers to better understand the privacy risks of these devices and the impact of data sharing on people’s online experiences.

After the release of this research, Amazon updated its disclosure to include that it uses smart speaker interaction data to infer user interests for the purposes of ad targeting, which was initially not disclosed. 

Originally published on the McKelvey Engineering website

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