Nordic Model Aimed at Protecting Women Faces Debate Over Unintended Consequences

Calls have begun to review the Anti-Prostitution Law, driven by voices saying it is unfair that only women are punished. How do countries around the world regulate sex work? This is the first installment of a series by sex industry journalist Akira Ikoma, questioning Japan’s approach through international case studies. In the second part, the problems of the “Nordic model” are examined.

[Part 1] The “Nordic model,” which only punishes customers who buy sex, was a groundbreaking system that changed the structure of sex work!?

Negative impacts brought about by the “Nordic model”

There is strong opposition to the Nordic model, which punishes only the men on the buyer side. It is said to lead to a decrease in income for sex workers who make a living from prostitution, and to make those involved more vulnerable to danger due to the undergrounding of sex work.

In France, where a law criminalizing the purchase of sex was enacted in 2016, survey results supporting this have been published.

With the criminalization of buying sex, the number of clients decreased. This reduced sex workers’ earnings and led to further financial hardship. Sex workers who were struggling due to reduced income ended up having to take clients even under unfavorable conditions. Their bargaining power with clients weakened, and the clients’ position became stronger.

Since the law punishes buyers, many respectable clients who did not want to risk arrest dropped out—people who did not want their lives disrupted by arrest, such as their jobs or families. What remained were so-called “bad clients”: those who are violent or unreliable in paying. In other words, the same kind of decline in client quality that occurred in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic took place.

A situation was created in which sex workers had no choice but to accept higher-risk acts. They became more frequently subjected to demands for excessive services and price reductions, and were more exposed to violence. However, sex workers who did not want to lose income ended up tolerating disadvantageous treatment from clients, and exploitation did not disappear.

A law created to protect sex workers ended up producing a situation in which even negotiations they would have previously refused had to be accepted.

It has instead become impossible to work safely

Furthermore, in order to prevent clients from being arrested, it is no longer possible to negotiate in public streets as before. Hotels can no longer be used either, and people have begun traveling by car to secluded places such as forests and ports, where negotiations and sexual services take place out of public view.

Clients prefer to negotiate quickly online and no longer provide detailed personal information. They avoid engaging in activities in public places such as hotels, and sex workers increasingly have to go to locations that are more convenient for clients rather than safer locations for themselves. Even in such circumstances, they must focus on reassuring clients in order to earn income.

In addition, the support services provided for sex workers offer amounts far too small to live on. Because there is a large gap between application and payment timing, income stops until benefits are received, quickly making it impossible to sustain daily life. It is also said that requirements such as signing a pledge not to engage in prostitution infringe on personal freedom.

There are many other problems. Working indoors with two or more sex workers together is considered illegal as maintaining a brothel, making safe working conditions impossible.

Since providing a place for sex work is also subject to enforcement, if a sex worker engages in prostitution at home, the landlord may also be prosecuted. As a result, sex workers risk being evicted and losing their housing.

Furthermore, it has become more difficult for sex workers to receive medical care. Since they are considered victims, most available support focuses on counseling, while accessible services such as testing for sexually transmitted infections are no longer readily available.

In Sweden and France, many sex workers are migrants without permanent residency, and since prostitution is not legal work, it can become a reason for deportation. Hospitals are also required to report suspected crimes to the police, so there is fear of detention by authorities, making it difficult for them to seek medical care.

Police have become a source of danger for sex workers. In order to catch buyers, police may intimidate sex workers or conduct surveillance in their homes or hotel rooms. As a result, sex workers themselves—not male clients—often become the targets of enforcement. Criminalizing the buyer effectively also treats sex workers as part of a criminal environment.

Are sex workers inferior beings?

In countries with laws criminalizing the purchase of sex, women who sell sex are seen as subjects who must be rescued and as inferior to ordinary people. Because of this, in Sweden, merely being a sex worker can lead social welfare offices to judge someone as an unfit parent lacking responsibility for raising children, resulting in denial of custody—even if there are no issues with parenting whatsoever.

The 2017 French documentary film “Better Than a Whore” depicts such social norms through the case of a sex worker who, after losing custody of her child to her ex-husband, was killed by him during her struggle to regain her child.

Government-imposed state rescue and state moral instruction, along with an overbearing paternalism and excessive interference in citizens’ lives, are portrayed as a dark side of welfare-state Sweden. The film presents a sorrowful and angry critique exposing the harmful effects of sex purchase criminalization laws.

What the film illustrates is that viewing sex workers as either victims or as people who chose a path of self-destruction socially excludes and marginalizes them. This, in turn, can enable violence by perpetrators. In the film, such a negative chain of events leads to murder.

Approaches to sex work that emphasize elimination is best, or it is not real work, or that frame it as discrimination and violence against women that must be stopped, do not simply oversimplify the issue. They can instead reinforce violence and unfair treatment against sex workers and make it harder for them to report abuse. As a result, sex workers who need support find it more difficult to access it. The problem lies in the large gap between such perspectives and the lived realities of people in sex work.

Should Japan adopt the “Nordic model”?

The Nordic model is clearly divided in terms of support and opposition depending on one’s view of sex work. One organization that signals a direction in this debate is the international human rights group Amnesty International, which has a policy of not supporting the Nordic model.

Amnesty calls on governments around the world to protect, respect, and fulfill the rights of sex workers.

In Japan, some women’s groups advocate for the introduction of the Nordic model. On the other hand, domestic sex worker support organizations strongly oppose it. From the perspective of sex worker rights movements, punishing buyers in a way that threatens the livelihoods of those involved is unacceptable.

The author feels that Japan should not adopt the Nordic model, because it is unrealistic to claim that all women who sell sexual services are victims who must be rescued. Having covered the sex industry for over 27 years, the author observes that many sex workers view sexual services as work and approach it seriously. Most are people who are positively trying to earn money.

The Nordic model’s idea that because men who buy exist, women who sell appear; therefore eliminating buyers will solve the problem can be inverted: because women who sell exist, men who buy appear.

Bias regarding sex work should also be removed. If prostitution is viewed only as a unilateral power relationship, it may appear as though powerful men are using money to overpower weak women.

However, in reality, there is also a side in which men who are weak in terms of sexual fulfillment pay women to receive sexual services. It is not necessarily the case that all situations are buying men = strong = perpetrators, selling women = weak = victims. One must not forget the existence of men who cannot have sex unless they pay (so-called sexually disadvantaged men).

The example of countries where the Nordic model has been implemented shows that it does not solve all problems. Decisions should not be made impulsively based on emotion. It is important to carefully consider reality over time and arrive at a solution that many people can accept.

References:

“Sex Work Studies”, edited by SWASH, Nihon Hyoronsha, 2018

“Fundamentals of Sexual Self-Determination,” Shunya Miyadai et al., Kinokuniya Shoten, 1998

“Why Should We Not Kill People?,” Itsuro Kobayashi, PHP Institute, 2014

In addition, various books and online media were consulted.