Research

My initial connection to the sex industry began in 1967, when I was hired by First United Church to be a community worker. Situated on Hastings at Gore—the church was to become the heart of the infamous Downtown East Side as the neighbourhood felt the effects of the westward shift of the city centre, the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, the termination of federal funding for social housing, and the pressure to move drug-related and prostitution activities out of nearby regions.

Community work at First United Church meant providing services for some of society’s most vulnerable and stigmatized populations, including the homeless, criminalized, and mentally ill. Soup kitchens, short-term shelters, clothing exchange programs, education, and counselling were part of their response to these challenges. When I thought about it, I included the city jail as a key part of the neighbourhood since it was located a block away from the church.

After making my case to the police officials, they agreed to let me in with women in the “holding tank” as they were arrested or on their way to and from the court. So, one or two evenings a week, I would drop in to the jail, meet with the women, and listen to their stories. I had nothing to offer then except an interested ear, a sympathetic diversion from the ongoing stresses in their lives, and some intelligence regarding options for support that they might find in the neighbourhood. I was not trying to convert them, had no access to financial resources that might warp the relationship, and had little power so was unlikely to be treated as a target for exploitation. For a period of time, my visits to the city jail were expanded to Friday lunch visits to Oakalla prison in New Westminster.

This experience not only gave me first-hand experience with women working in the sex industry, but it developed my skills when engaging with them, established a network with the police and other administrators relating to sex work, built my confidence in the value of my work, and contributed directly to my sense that the public and legal perceptions of sex work were limited, biased, and increasing the hazards to the health and safety of sex workers – especially those operating on the street.

My sojourn at First United lasted two years (1967-1969) then I returned to UBC to complete my MA in Sociology.  It wasn’t until 1982 that I had another opportunity to reconnect with sex workers.

Bill and I moved to Montreal in 1972. I had graduated with my MA and Bill was completing his PhD. We had a three-year old daughter and were expecting our second child in November. Bill settled into his position at Sir George Williams University and I into the neighbourhood. After a year or so I reactivated my professional work through consultation to several NGOs and part-time teaching at Concordia.

In order to advance Bill’s research on farm families and improve our baby French, we moved to Cap-Saint-Ignace for his first sabbatical year (1978-1979). This is a small Québec village about 70 km from Levis on the south side of the St. Lawrence River—one of the oldest in Québec. It was here that I honed my skills relating to research-community relations. I joined multiple groups in the village, collaborated with Bill to design a formal survey on farm families (with my contribution being a focus on farm women), trained local citizens in the administration of the survey, conducted analysis, and produced several reports for the community. Although not directly related to the topic of sex work, most of these skills infuse my later research and advocacy work—especially related to my commitment to high quality research with under-recognized populations and giving voice to under-recognized women, whether on the farm or in the sex industry.

Having the research in-hand, I applied for a PhD at the Université de Montréal, was accepted, and began the program with a dissertation on the topic of farm women in mind. My thesis: “Le travail des femmes à la suite des transformations de la production agricole: 1940-1980” was successfully defended in 1987.

As so often happens in the production of a PhD, the route to its completion is never straight nor simple. Before completing the writing of my thesis, I was given the opportunity to work as a Research Officer for the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women in Ottawa (1982-1984). I accepted the job!

In the early 1980s, the public reaction to street-based prostitution and businesses was becoming more and more negative. Feminist concerns regarding the prevalence of degrading images of women were growing, as was police frustration with trying to control street prostitution.  Eventually in 1983 the government established a Special Committee on Prostitution and Pornography (Fraser Committee).

Settled in at the Advisory Council, I was invited to draft a report to the Fraser Committee on Pornography and Prostitution. This brought me back to my early days in downtown Vancouver and reignited my understanding that sex work and sex workers needed special attention because of the research demands and the misrepresentation of those working in the industry. Preparing for the report, my literature searches, interviews, and even a film cameo for Janis Cole and Holly Dale (“Hookers on Davie, 1984”), reignited my passion to do something for sex workers.

My work was not well accepted at the Advisory Council, however. My recommendation for decriminalization of sex work (spelled out in my own Brief to the Fraser Committee) conflicted with the version of feminism that saw little room for women choosing sex work as a legitimate option. It was a perspective that would frustrate me throughout my career. In the end, they rewrote the report recommendations to their liking and left me with a single chapter: Chapter 4: The Prostitution Debate (Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1984). I resigned from the Council in 1984.

I was not left without alternative employment on the sex work topic, however. I worked as a Research Consultant for the Department of Justice when the Fraser Committee was designing their field studies, submitted a brief of my own to the Fraser Committee, and published several prostitution-related articles based on secondary research.

After my experience at the Canadian Advisory Council, I was not yet ready to take up research on sex work. Instead, after defending my PhD thesis, I completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship on the Household and the Economy (1987-1989). Only then, with encouragement from a colleague, did I apply for a Canada Research Fellowship. This time I embraced the challenge and decided to conduct research on Adult Prostitution in Canada.