Swedish Official: Ending Prostitution Should be Each Country's Goal
By Paul Gray
www.catholicnews.com
June 22, 2007
PERTH, Australia (CNS) -- The Swedish government adviser on prostitution and human trafficking said ending rather than controlling the prostitution trade should be the goal of every country.
The adviser, Gunilla Ekberg, also said Australia has been in breach of its international human rights obligation to combat the prostitution industry since it allowed the state of Victoria to legalize the selling of sex in 1984. New moves by the state of Western Australia to decriminalize prostitution would further the nation's long-standing abuse of women's rights, she said.
Ekberg played a key role in setting up Sweden's 1999 anti-prostitution law, which makes it a crime for men to buy sex and encourages women's attempts to escape the sex trade.
In a telephone interview from Stockholm, Sweden, with The Record, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth, Ekberg said a fundamental difference between the Australian and Swedish approaches to prostitution is that in Sweden "we have the vision that you can actually end prostitution."
"We want to have a country where women and girls, mostly, but also young men and boys are not victims of violence through prostitution," she said.
Prostitution should be seen in the same way as rape, she said.
"If you have that vision, then you must have such legislation," she said. "You penalize rape, so why shouldn't you penalize rape through prostitution?"
A Vatican document released in mid-June called prostitution "a form of modern slavery" and said its clients should be punished legally.
The Swedish approach does not rely only on penalizing men who buy the services of prostitutes, but also on educating young people and the public about the ways in which women are typically victimized by the prostitution trade.
Ekberg said many young boys -- in Sweden and other countries -- get the "majority of their sexual education through the Internet, through pornography sites and through sites where young people interact in a very sexualized way."
She said a documentary movie, "Lilia Forever," portraying the life of a young Lithuanian woman who was involved in the sex trade and eventually killed herself, was widely used in schools as part of the Swedish government's education campaign.
"What's interesting in that film is that there is a long sequence on the buyers: not in a pornographic way, but showing the different men purchasing her and what they want to do with her," Ekberg said.
She and the Swedish government employed the same principle -- revealing the male -- in their advertising campaigns to promote the anti-prostitution law.
"In street prostitution imagery there's always a girl in a short skirt and high heels and a car standing there. I wanted to get the man out of the car and make him visible, because he's the reason why she's there in the first place," she said.
Research showed that most buyers of "sexual services" are men, usually between 40 and 55, who are generally married or live with a woman, and they have children, Ekberg said. This research was reflected in the posters created by the Swedish government; she said male volunteers were needed for making the posters because advertising agencies said no male actors wanted to be on them.
Ekberg said she strongly opposes the trend, supported by the prostitution industry, of labeling prostitution as "sex work."
"Prostitution is not work, obviously," she said. "It's like saying that being a slave is work."
Ekberg, who has worked with street prostitutes in North America and Europe, said it is also a myth that prostitutes freely choose their lifestyles.
"This is not middle-class girls (who are in prostitution)," she said. "It's women who come from a marginalized background in some way or another. They're often victims of prior sexual abuse.
"We also know that -- for example in Canada, where I've lived for many years -- the majority of women who enter prostitution ... are women from Aboriginal communities. Those communities, just as in Australia, have enormous social, economic problems, and women in particular are in dire straits in these communities."
Ekberg also said the contemporary advertising, fashion and music industries are helping legitimize the prostitution industry because of the way they stereotype women.
"The clothes that, 15 years ago, we saw only in pornography are now mainstream apparel for young women," she said. "There is a continuous pressure on young women to believe that, for example, becoming a lap-dancer or doing striptease is nothing out of the ordinary."
"Copyright © 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service."