Prostitution and the Irish State: From Prohibitionism to a Globalised Sex Trade

Abstract

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Problematizing Prostitution in Law and Policy in the Republic of Ireland

“…(JOC, 23 January 2013: 18) Whilst to a certain extent we can agree a link exists between trafficking, prostitution and women's migration, we argue any unquestioned conflation of these separate issues is problematic. The hegemony underpinning this assumption allows campaigners to ignore the fact that, in many cases, women enter Ireland independently or of their own volition and very often legally (Munro, 2008;Ward, 2010). Trafficking has reawakened, to some degree, the public understanding of the global inequalities driving trafficking.…”

“…Such thinking frames law and policy measures in jurisdictions like New Zealand, which has removed prostitution from its penal code and addresses it through health, labour and taxation law as well as wider social policies (Abel et al, 2010). A less frequent conversation in feminist inquiry is how Ireland understands and attempts to regulate prostitution and sexual practices (for exceptions see Luddy, 2007;Ward, 2010). To address this lacuna we offer a critical, feminist analysis of the dominant framing of prostitution shaping Ireland's current antiprostitution debates.…”

Ideal Irish Womanhood Contested in Martina Devlin’s Short Story “Alice Through the Bathroom Mirror”

“…In the case of Ireland, women started to form organisations which dared to challenge the Constitution of 1937, especially the power of the Church in determining women's place and role in society (Breitenbach and Thane 6). Nowadays, women are still fighting to achieve a total inclusion in society and, as I said before, eliminate the references to women's role and place in society in the constitution (Ward: 2010). Martina Devlin's short story "Alice through the Bathroom Mirror", commissioned for the 2003 Belfast Festival by BBC Radio 4, explores such issues in contemporary Ireland, where the discrimination and precarisation of women are still present.…”

“…In the case of Ireland, the Constitution, even today, restricts women's role and place in society referring to their crucial role at home (The Stationery Office 2015: Article 41). This stereotypical and discriminatory language has triggered uneasiness among women who are actively calling for a Referendum to eliminate references to women's role and place in society in the constitution (Ward: 2010). Yet, there seems to be a long path until we can get rid of the vestiges of the past.…”

Social justice for sex workers as a ‘politics of doing’: Research, policy and practice

“…There is an extensive literature about the polarised nature of feminist prostitution politics and the impact of state feminist ideas (Ellison, 2017; Huschke and Ward, 2017; Pheterson, 1989; Pitcher and Wijers, 2014; Sanders and Campbell, 2008; Scoular, 2004; Ward, 2010), but it is not our intention to rehearse the specifically ideological contours of this debate here. Rather, we want to use our analysis to think critically about what we perceive as the fundamental problem in how Irish neo-abolitionists use state feminism to frame their interventions in this policy area.…”