08 Oct Study Finds Canadian Sex Workers Happy, Content With Their Jobs
In an attempt to bump off the proposed Bill C-36, which seeks to illegalize buying sex in Canada, a new study has revealed that most sex workers in the country are actually comfortable, happy and content in their kind of job.
Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the study was based on hundreds of interviews in six Canadian communities. It found that a whopping 70 percent of sex workers are not just satisfied with their jobs, it also discovered that 68 percent feel they have good job security.
Eighty-two percent of the respondents also feel they are appropriately paid.
The proposed new prostitution law Bill C-36 seeks to criminalize the selling and purchase of sex. Its ultimate goal is to abolish the particular industry from Canada. The bill’s proponents have argued that most people who sell sex are victims, while those who purchase sex are perverts and fiends. It is expected to become law this winter.
But the study’s findings strongly rejected this notion, according to lead researcher Cecilia Benoit.
“They don’t see themselves as victims in the sense that they’ve been portrayed in the current bill. They’re actually a lot like you and I. They just haven’t had quite so many advantages in some cases.
In fact, 81 percent of sex workers and 83 percent of clients surveyed said it is the sex workers who provide the terms of their transactions.
Chris Atchison, a sociologist from the University of Victoria, said that when clients come to a sex worker looking for this and that, the usual reply the other party will say is that “I’m either willing or unwilling to provide that.”
And then, during the transaction talks, “the longer the exchange goes on the less likely that we’re going to see conflict and the more likely we’re going to see increased sexual safety between the partners,” Atchison added.
There were a total of 218 sex workers in six communities interviewed for the study, including those at St. John’s, N.L., Montreal, Waterloo, Ont., Fort McMurray, Alta., Calgary and Victoria.
Source: The International Business Times