Brief Research Summaries

This block of research projects began with a Canada Research Fellowship (CRF) about adult prostitution in Canada. My goal was to inform the ongoing public debates by analysing secondary data from the field studies the Justice Department commissioned for the Fraser Committee. Needed empirical data included the age of entry, the use of drugs, the involvement of pimps, the risk of violence, and the alleged association between sex work and victimization. The fellowship quickly developed into a broader series of case studies grounded in field work on high-track prostitution strolls in San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto. Field work began in San Francisco in 1990. Martin Weinberg (Indiana University)—who had learned of my fellowship—invited me to join him in designing a field study focussing on women, men, and transgender workers involved in street-based prostitution. The objective was to explore gender differences in the work and off-work patterns of street-based sex workers. I replicated the study in Montreal in 1991, allowing for geographical as well as gender comparisons. As my understanding of the realities of sexual service work increased, I became interested in how it differed, if at all, with the work experiences and patterns present in “asexual” service work. Thus, the third project emerged. It compared the working experiences of sex workers and hospital workers in Montreal and Toronto (1993-1994). Hospital workers (aids and orderlies) were selected for the key similarities between work settings: neither job had formal educational entry requirements, hospitals were adjacent to the strolls, we recruited hospital workers who shared a late shift similar to sex workers, both jobs involved emotional labour and intimate contact with the client/patient (e.g., cleaning of the body and bodily emissions). The work was ground-breaking for several reasons. It included women, men, and transgender people in the same study, the focus was on prostitution as a revenue-generating activity rather than a crime, the interviews were conducted in the field (i.e., the actual work environment), and the same research instruments and fieldwork techniques were used on all sites. Because we were able to describe the gendered structure of sex work while testing the consistency of the results across different geographical areas and with a different occupation (hospital work), we significantly improved the power of case study analysis for reliable generalizations regarding street-based sex work. In addition to the CRF, these projects were funded by several agencies including Concordia University’s General Research Fund; a SSHRC Women and Work Strategic Grant; FCAR, Programme Établissement de Nouveaux Chercheurs; and the Faculty Research Development Programme at Concordia. Articles and presentations related to these studies are included in Selected Readings.

Funded (2000-2004) by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the National Network of Environmental and Women’s Health (NNEWH), the STAR project was designed to study Canadian public policy and its impact on the health and well-being of sex workers. Along with principal investigator Jacqueline Lewis and co-investigator Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale (University of Windsor), we combined our efforts with those of community partners, including the Regional Municipality of Peel Health Department (Ontario), the Exotic Dancers’ Alliance of Ontario, Stella Montreal and the Sex Workers Alliance of Vancouver. The overall goal of this study was to develop an understanding of the way public policies in the areas of health, social service, employment, policing, municipal regulations, federal law, and immigration affect occupational health, safety and well-being. We used occupations in the sex industry for this purpose because a wide diversity of levels and types of policies affect the lives of sex workers. At the time a current and growing body of research and commentary was available on health and safety factors related to sex work; and there were community organizations with front-line experience dealing with health and safety factors related to sex work. The three-year project—consisting of various methodologies through document searching and interviewing conducted by researchers, students, and members from our community partners—developed methods to examine a wide range of public policies from the perspective of their impact on health, safety and well-being. Our findings provided in-depth information on how various policies affect sex work and developed guidelines to maximize health, safety and well-being in the sex industry. To learn more about our projects and community partners visit: www.uwindsor.ca/star

This CIHR-funded research program (2011-2016) focused on reasons for variability in health and safety among one group of Canadians, sex workers, many of whom face elevated risks of violence and premature death. Our team was made up of community partners, people who had experience working in the sex industry, and academics and students from across Canada. Many of these people worked for over two decades to raise public awareness about these issues. The purpose of a collaboration of this kind is to ensure our study reflects the experiences, and speaks to the interests of, as wide an audience as possible. This is to ensure the knowledge we produce is directly applicable to the people we are working with, and easily translated into practical change at different policy levels. Together we conducted a 360-degree study of the sex industry in six Canadian municipalities (Victoria, BC; Montreal, QC; Fort McMurray, AB; Calgary, AB; St. John’s, NL; and Kitchener-Waterloo, ON). The sites were carefully selected so that key comparisons could be made on the main determinants of health and safety of people involved in the Canadian sex industry. Using well-established social science methods, we selected respondents in a manner that represents as well as possible, the range of people and organizations involved in the industry. Our respondents include adults who sell sexual services (Project 2), spouses/intimate partners of sellers (Project 3), adults who pay for sexual services (Project 4), sex industry business managers (Project 5), and people involved with creating and enforcing laws and regulations affecting sellers, buyers, managers, and other third parties (Project 6). Learn more about our projects and community partners at: www.understandingsexwork.com

I led Project 6 with contributions from Kevin Walby (University of Winnipeg). Participants in the study included people involved with creating and enforcing the laws and regulations affecting sellers, buyers, managers, and other third parties and compared how they are implemented in the six different research sites. In particular, it examined how municipal police enact sections of the Criminal Code of Canada; how inspectors, licensing boards, and municipal councils attempt to regulate sex work, and the effect this can have on sex workers’ health, security and resiliency. It also investigated the role of outreach and service providers who often act as a liaison between regulatory agencies and sex workers. Learn more about our projects and community partners at: www.understandingsexwork.com