A woman working in the sex trade wants to file for workers’ compensation, get an STI test paid for by the company, pay tax and take out a mortgage. Ordinary worker’s rights are denied almost entirely on the single ground that the trade is “sex work.” In Japan, with the Anti-Prostitution Law as backdrop, sex workers are not recognised as workers. Yet in reality hundreds of thousands of women earn their living in the industry, and how to design their protection is contested worldwide.

Sex workers’ rights (Japanese: 性労働者の権利) is the umbrella term for the movement and concept that holds sex work to be a form of occupational labour, whose practitioners should receive the same legal and social protections as workers in other industries. From 1970s Western activism, and through debate at the ILO, WHO, and Amnesty International over the recognition of worker status, it developed into a current demanding decriminalization and labour-law coverage. This entry treats the international debate neutrally, presenting both abolitionist and rights-based positions.

Core of the concept

The core claim is that existing legal regimes speak of sex work only as either “crime” or “harm,” and that a third option, recognition as “labour,” should be added. Concretely this includes workers’ compensation for occupational injury, relief from bearing the cost of STI testing oneself, labour remedies against contractual exploitation (promoter cuts, dormitory deductions), tax deductions and social insurance, the right to refuse clients, and a safe route to report work-related violence to police.

Four legal approaches are commonly distinguished: full criminalization (most of the U.S., China), criminalizing only the buyer under the Nordic model (Sweden, France), partial legalization under a licensing or regulationist model (Germany, the Netherlands), and full decriminalization (New Zealand, parts of Belgium). The mainstream of the rights movement supports the last.

History

A widely cited origin point is the 1975 occupation of the Saint-Nizier church in Lyon, France, where about a hundred street workers protesting police violence and repeated raids barricaded themselves inside; it became a symbol of sex workers’ self-organisation. Through the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the need for the participation of those directly affected in STI policy gained international recognition, and the WHO and UNAIDS began to situate sex workers’ rights within the frame of public health.

From the 2010s, moves toward legal recognition accelerated. In 2015 Amnesty International adopted an official policy supporting the decriminalization of sex work, sparking major controversy within feminism. In 2018 Juno Mac and Molly Smith’s Revolting Prostitutes offered a widely read theoretical statement from the movement’s side.

The situation in Japan

In Japan the 1956 Anti-Prostitution Law bans “prostitution involving intercourse,” and positions those engaged in it as “not punished but subject to protective rehabilitation.” Sex workers are thus not legally recognised as “workers,” which fixes a structure in which labour law, social insurance, and workers’ compensation are hard to apply. Meanwhile soapland and fashion health are tolerated in practice, and the gap between reality and law has persisted for over half a century.

The central group in Japan’s sex workers’ rights movement, SWASH (Sex Work and Sexual Health), has been active since the 2000s. Comprising those directly involved alongside researchers and medical workers, it has pursued HIV prevention, condom distribution, labour counselling, and publishing. Its 2018 volume Sex Work Studies is positioned as the first systematic collection on sex workers’ rights in Japan. During the 2022 debate over the AV protection law, the issue reached general media, and the framing of performers’ contract problems as “worker protection” had some spillover into the wider rights debate.

Controversy within feminism

The rights argument is the subject of fierce controversy within feminism. On one side stands an abolitionist position holding that sex work is the extreme form of male domination and should be abolished; on the other, an advocacy position holding that the self-determination and worker status of those involved should be recognised. The two largely divide between the Nordic model and decriminalization, and the debate continues. In Japan this controversy is still less visible, but through the debates over the AV protection law and papa-katsu regulation, the contact between the voices of those involved and policy argument is gradually being built.

See also

• Anti-Prostitution Law
• AV protection law
• Fuzoku (sex industry)
• Leaving the sex trade (datsu-fūzoku)
• Compensated dating (enjo kōsai)
• Migrant sex work (dekasegi fūzoku)