Until recently, it was widely believed that the social forces behind the existence of prostitution and other types of sex work would eventually be eliminated by certain specific factors, including the increase of female participation in the labour market and the reduction of ‘double gender standards’.
Yet the sex industry has continued to flourish, and has diversified spatially, socially, and technologically. People are now starting to rethink the idea that prostitution is simply the ‘trafficking of women’, which highlights harmful gender inequalities. What’s more, it is no longer just the poorer and more disadvantaged classes, but also the so-called ‘new middle classes’, that are becoming increasingly involved in the world of sex work.
Prostitution was previously used as an example of the moral issues that arise when the human body is used as a commodity. In every associated field, from sexology to psychoanalysis, there was a tendency to normalise the behaviour of the male clients, while the women were presumed to be showing symptoms of psychopathological disorders.
Things began to change, however, in the 1980s, when feminist movements started to oppose the use of the word ‘prostitute’, and all its negative connotations, and coined the term ‘sex worker’, which suggests that the sale of sex is no better or worse than any other industry that sells a service. In the beginning of the 1990s, prostitution and the sex trade exploded onto the pop culture scene, on talk shows, and in documentaries and films, such as Pretty Woman. The sex trade has since become a multi-billion-dollar, multi-faceted industry; this is both a cause and a consequence of the development of other sectors of the global economy, from tourism to technology, and so on.
