Photo by Dkpto

After a very closely fought battle in the 2011 Danish parliamentary election campaign, a centre-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (S) was victorious late last Thursday.  While Social Democratic Party leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt is set to be the first female prime minister, the party suffered its worst fate at the polls since 1903, receiving just under 25% of the votes. Together with the Socialist People’s Party (SF), S is now negotiating with the Social-Liberal Party (R) to form a coalition.

While not central to the election campaign, the question of whether or not to criminalize the purchase of sex has been a particularly salient issue in Denmark over the past year.  The centre-left parties, with the Social Democrats in the lead, have been discussing a criminalization of the purchase of sex for some time now. Given official support from the Social Democrats, the Socialist Left and the Unity List (EL) for such a ban, plus the support of the previous Equality spokesperson from the Social Liberals, many assumed that the ban would be a done deal if the  four parties managed to bring about a shift in government. Yet, despite their victory, it does not appear that a Swedish-style ban on the purchase of sexual services will immediately be the case. To some extent, this appears to be the result of the Social-Liberal Party appointing a new Equality spokesperson, who opposed criminalization. Beyond the immediate impact (or lack thereof) on policy, it’s also clear that the balance of the underlying ideas being mobilized in the Danish prostitution policy debate has been shifting, and this could have an impact on future policy developments.

One particularly important pro-ban actor in Denmark is the Social Democratic MP Mette Frederiksen. She proposed the ban already in 2002 and was later backed by both the left-wing Socialist People’s Party and the red-green Unity List. In 2009, also her own party agreed to support her.  The March 8th Initiative (2008-), which from the beginning was constituted by a number of women’s movements and NGOs, have subsequently seen some very powerful new members join them in their goal to ban the purchase of sex. However, the Social Liberals, whose parliamentary support S, SF and EL desperately need in order to realize the ban, never fully agreed on a criminalization. The Social Liberal Party is something of a rebel in the Danish parliament, reluctant to categorize itself as belonging to either of the two blocs with their mix of social and liberal politics. Although the Social-Liberal Party have pledged support to S and SF since 2007, the party have a history of supporting the centre-right alliance.

In 2008, the Social-Liberal Party’s spokesperson for Equality, Lone Dybkjær, announced that she wanted to criminalize the customers and was celebrated by both Mette Frederiksen (S) and SF for this statement. Dybkjær motivated her position with reference to the experiences with the Swedish ban and pointed to that more than 90 percent of the Swedes now think buying sex is unacceptable. She also referred to the “violent increase” in trafficking in women and claimed that since men cannot seem to tell victims of trafficking apart from “other prostitutes”, the customers have to be criminalized. But there was disagreement within the Social-Liberal Party. Linda Kristiansen (R) is a strong opponent to criminalization and ironically, she also pointed to the Swedish ban and argued that the criminalization has made it harder for authorities to reach out to prostitutes.

At one point in 2009, it looked like the left bloc, including R were close to an agreement on demanding a criminalization of the purchase of sexual services. Thereby, a shift in political power would mean a realization of the ban. Margrethe Wivel (R) put forward a motion for resolution to criminalize the purchase of sex on a party congress and argued for the moral value of such a bill. But no decision was taken.

On January 1^st this year, Manu Sareen stepped in as a substitute for Lone Dybkjær in Folketinget while she was taking a few months time-out. Less than two months after stepping in as Dybkjær’s substitute, Sareen pointed to criticism of the Swedish ban in conjunction with announcing that the Social Liberals would now oppose criminalization.  “A significant reason for our decision not to support a criminalization of sex customers is the experiences from Sweden. The latest evaluation report shows that there is no evidence pointing to a decrease in the number of prostitutes over the 10 year period that the bill has existed”, Sareen declared on his homepage.

In June, the prostitution debate was refuelled yet again when it became evident that a majority of the Danish people did not agree with the S-SF-EL alliance on banning the purchase of sex; a survey showed that 57 percent of the Danish people wanted to make prostitution a fully legal job and improve the rights for sex workers, including the right to join a labour rights union and to receive unemployment funds. Only 19 percent were against it. At the same time, the Social Democrats raged against a new report on prostitution that was issued by the National Research Centre for Welfare (SFI) and was the most extensive of its kind thus far. The report showed that a majority of the sex workers in massage parlours wished to remain in their jobs. But the Social Democrats protested: “Sex should be about love, not money”. “Voluntary prostitution is a myth”, the party’s spokesperson for Equality said.

By this time, Lone Dybkjær had returned to the parliament and commented on the survey: “If you would have asked if people believe that it is fair to legalize a job where there is 50 percent of violence, I am sure you would get a different answer”. However, she made it clear that she did not speak for the whole party. Dybkjær had previously announced that she would not run for parliament in the 2011 election and was therefore no longer an important player. Moreover, the survey had shown that almost 60 percent of the Social-Liberal voters were in favour of increased rights for sex workers. And Manu Sareen, who was now a leading candidate for the Social-Liberal Party in Copenhagen, announced only a week before the election that R would definitely not support S and SF in a criminalization of sex customers. He said that he did not believe in “the happy whore”, but that he neither could see any advantages of following Sweden in a ban. Instead, he claimed that the Social-Liberal Party wanted to develop a national exit strategy, much in line with the centre-right position.

Arguably the most remarkable about this renewed interest for prostitution in Denmark is that the issue is now discussed within the context of a gender equality debate, something that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago; when even the connotation of the words “feminism” and “gender” was frowned upon as a left-over from the 70s, alternatively a puritan idea from Sweden. However, Denmark is not only seeing a shift towards a feminist perspective on the purchase of sex, but there is also a rise in sex worker rights activism (see SIO for instance). Overall, there is a politicization of the whole prostitution debate, which is extremely different from the one that took place prior to the decriminalization of prostitution in 1999 – and in the middle of the heated debate is the Swedish ban on sexual services.

Gradually, gender-neutral and rather depoliticized ideas about prostitution as an individual social problem have had to give way to feminist ideas, framing prostitution as a symptom of gender inequality and sometimes even as violence against women – an argument that is well recognized from Swedish rhetoric. These voices have over the years made their way from peripheral corners of the debate and into the very core where they are now agitating loud and clear for a criminalization of the purchase of sexual services. At this year’s International Conference on Prostitution and Trafficking, “Grosse Freiheit?”, the Social Democrat Magnus Heunicke announced that “if we can gather the required majority, and I think we can, I promise that I will implement the legislative amendment that criminalizes the sex customer within the first 100 days of a S-SF government.”

Danish sociologist Claus Lautrup has also voiced confidence that Denmark soon will follow the Nordic neighbours in banning the purchase of sex. “Well-educated women view all prostitution as a matter of gender politics and as violence against women, and they are getting more and more influential in their parties. The movement is in full bloom and it is just a matter of time before a criminalization is introduced.” Indeed, the gender equality perspective on prostitution seems to be held primarily by the political elite, while the previously mentioned public survey implies that the majority of the Danish people want to increase the legal rights for sex workers.

It is possible that if Lone Dybkjær would have remained as the Social-Liberal Party’s spokesperson for Equality, the party could have joined the centre-left bloc in their demand for a criminalization. And it is possible that in time, R will change their position, although it is very unlikely that the ban will be realized within the first 100 days of the S-SF government. Beyond doubt though, is that the tone of the Danish prostitution debate has definitely changed – radically – when feminist ideas about prostitution as violence against women are expressed by the most central Danish policymakers; and when the Swedish model that was so detested in 1999, now is discussed as a real alternative.

Related posts:

1. The impact of Finnish parliamentary election results on prostitution policy
2. “Prohibition” — the Danish frame

The woman located the training position herself, with the Slagelse job center subsequently signing off on the placement as part of her employment plan.  According to Hans E. Rasmussen, director of the Slagelse job center, the placement proceeded in accordance with existing guidelines:

We checked that the business was listed in the Central Business Register.  It is a completely legal establishment, and our business consultant contacted the firm by telephone and received confirmation that the citizen would receive instruction in body massage and zone therapy so that she would be able to apply for new employment opportunities.

Rasmussen stated that, as per guidelines, no one from the job center visited the business in question, Viva Massage, prior to giving the green light to the woman’s training placement.  In response to a question from a Politiken journalist as to whether any alarm bells went off when it became clear that the business advertised in the massage section of the tabloid Ekstra Bladet, Rasmussen stated that he wasn’t familiar with the advertisements, but that any number of things could be listed there.

A number of Danish politicians immediately seized upon the story, demanding an explanation from government ministers.  Red-Green Alliance MP, Line Barfod, questioned whether it could be regarded as reasonable to allow for the unemployed to be activated for job training in brothels, and also how such a decision could be seen as consistent with the government’s ‘general view’ of prostitution as a ‘social problem’.  Further developing her critique, Barfod noted:

You almost can’t believe this is true.  But this is, unfortunately, just the latest absurd example of the unemployed being sent to insane or pointless activation projects in the municipalities.  The problem is that the government only provides economic incentives for placing the unemployed in activation schemes, but it doesn’t make demands as to the quality (of those schemes).  It’s the government’s responsibility to tighten the rules so that the unemployed aren’t sent out to participate in anything that comes along.

Torben Hansen, employment spokesperson for the opposition Social Democrats labeled the decision as ‘completely absurd‘, maintaining that it was the responsibility of Slagelse job center to ensure that the activation plan for the woman could receive the stamp of approval in terms of quality.  Hansen stressed that current labor market activation programs allowed for what he derisively termed ‘find your inner tiger’ courses and that the system requires a substantial tightening up in terms of quality. Socialist People’s Party employment spokesperson Eigil Andersen stated that it ‘couldn’t be the case that the public (sector) approves of a woman increasing her level of qualifications at a brothel.’  Conservative MP and parliamentary labor market committee chair Helle Sjelle referred to the case as a ‘grotesque example of pointless activation’, and that she failed to see how ‘this form of activation could help the woman (get back onto the labor market).’

In response, the minister of employment, Liberal Inger Støjberg, voiced her agreement with those criticizing the decision of Slagelse job center, and also made it clear that she expected the city to correct the ‘error’ and to ensure that there would be no similar cases.  Helle Blak, the Social Democratic chair of Slagelse’s labor market and integration committee, expressed understanding for those who termed the case ‘grotesque’, emphasizing that it ‘underscores the necessity of ensuring that trade unions and municipalities work closely together to stop those firms that are swindling (public authorities in order to get) activation and salary grants.’

Undoubtedly, there are many, particularly in an international audience, that will regard this story as somewhat of a novelty, filing it alongside other anecdotes thought to confirm impressions of Scandinavians as decidedly liberal. However, NPPR finds the incident intriguing because of the arguments that were raised — as well as those that weren’t — in the subsequent debate.  If one confines an analysis solely to the remarks made by elected representatives at the national and municipal level, as reported in the Danish media, then it is clear that the chief focus of the discussions was on the degree to which labor market activation programs were being appropriately implemented.  While both Barfod and Andersen’s comments did include subtle references to ideas about gender equality, such claims were not the primary thrust of the overall criticism of Slagelse job center.  Rather, the decision to allow a woman to spend four weeks in job training at a brothel was highlighted as an extreme example of the need to conduct an overview of labor market policy measures intended to reduce unemployment.

The degree to which gender equality ideas, as well as related claims about a more gender-neutral victimhood, were absent from the debate over the decision taken by Slagelse job center becomes all the more apparent when one contrasts the remarks from politicians in the national media with those of interest groups and political party youth sections.  In conjunction with the announcement of a blockade of the Slagelse job center, the Zealand Region of the Danish Social Democratic Youth issued a press release that put ideas of gender equality at the heart of their critique:

We do not recognize prostitution as an occupation and believe that it represents the exploitation of weak women in society by some men who purchase sex.  The Slagelse job center has either behaved cynically and sent a woman into inhumane conditions, or it has also been unusually clumsy and committed an unforgivable mistake.

Similarly, the March 8th Initiative, a coalition of Danish organizations seeking to prohibit the purchase of sexual services, issued a press release noting that if ‘activation at brothels becomes a regular component of job plans (for the unemployed), then the next step will have to be that we send young girls to compulsory education internships to be prostitutes.’  Here, however, it is interesting to note that all other references in the press release to those who are, or could be, involved in the sex industry, were made in gender neutral terms that stressed a more generic victimhood:

Public authorities should not recognize prostitution — on the contrary — they should make an effort to help people obtain an existence without potential exploitation and serious injury to both body and mind.

…

The decriminalization of prostitution in 1999 was intended to lift the responsibility for prostitution off of the shoulders of the prostitutes, not so that the authorities could help the sex industry exploit even more people.

Thus, while we accept that the decision of Slagelse job center represents nothing more than an interesting anecdote to some, we also believe that it speaks very directly to the importance of ideas for prostitution policy debates, particularly when viewed in a comparative perspective.  The contrast between the Danish debate — in this instance — and that of Sweden, where prostitution is regarded by many as an expression of violence against women, is striking.  While the effects of the Swedish legislation would not allow for a comparable case to crop up in Sweden, it is nonetheless difficult to imagine that Swedish politicians would choose to discuss labor market activation schemes in brothels as solely being a policy problem wherein implementation had gone awry. Rather, given the salience of gender ideas for shaping Swedish prostitution policy, we would expect that claims based on those ideas would figure prominently in their rhetoric.  That such statements are not central to the Danish debate at this stage, and that prostitution is instead cast in terms of being ‘a social problem’ in Denmark, says a great deal about the comparative ability of gender equality ideas to be mobilized in order to shape prostitution policy debates.

No related posts.

During my research into the case of Denmark, I bumped into an interesting debate that seems to be a decisive starting point for the increased framing of sex workers as victims; a debate about weather health-care workers should facilitate access to sex workers for the differently-abled. It seems that simple questions of legality are unable to encompass all of the dynamics in the prostitution debate. Even within a legal framework allowing the purchase of sexual services, there is an emerging powerful frame that chooses to cast sex workers as victims.

From the start, the law that in 1999 decriminalized prostitution in Denmark, had two sides: one that decriminalized and one that illegitimized sex workers. They are and are not legal and this has confused the debate. Sex workers can register as workers and pay tax, but they are not able to get sickness allowance, pensions or unemployment funding. Prostitution is not to be regarded as a legitimate job. Another part of the law is criminalization of the purchase of sexual services from sex workers under 18 years old. But the purchase is only illegal if the sex worker is selling sex on a regular basis. If s/he just wanted to exchange sex for a dinner or a pair of new shoes, we won’t judge, the Minister of Justice Frank Jensen said.

About the same time as the decriminalization law was implemented, another law came into practice, that enhanced the basic human rights and needs of differently-abled people. It was stated that the municipality have to pay for any extra expenses that a differently-abled person might have; that other persons of the same age does not have. Those basic needs included help and support in relation to sex – if a person want to have sex but can’t perform the action by him/herself due to a disability, s/he should get the help to do it and the municipality should pay for the expenses. Some municipalities interpreted this paragraph like it was their responsibility to pay for and arrange a meeting with a sex worker, some did not. In 2001 the Ministry of Social Affairs (Socialministeriet) in Denmark published a report “Seksualitet – uanset handicap”, containing guide-lines for health-care workers to follow in supporting the sexual needs of differently-abled persons. In the report it is stated that the health-care workers have to create an openness and a dialogue about sexuality with the differently-abled caretaker. It is said that if s/he wants to have sex with a sex worker, the health-care workers should make an assessment of the situation and offer help to arrange the meeting. The Social Ministry established in this report that sex is a basic human need and that the municipalities has a responsibility to fulfil it, be it through prostitution.

This was an approach taken within the legal framework. However, the response among politicians was somewhat surprising in that it was univocal: the whole range of political parties in Folketinget, from right to left prostested. Jette Gotlieb, a member of the political party Enhedslisten said that mentioning prostitutes as a possibility in supporting the sexuality of differently-abled was absurd. The organization Reden, a rest-house looking after some of the worst-off prostitutes on the streets, claimed that the human rights of the socially disabled had been ignored while claiming the rights for physically or intellectually disabled (Ritzaus Bureau, 8/8 2000). This started a heated debate where interest organizations claimed that differently-abled should have the same opportunities as other citizens. Sex workers claimed their right to sell sex to whoever they wanted and that the intimacy the differently-abled experienced with sex workers was very important.

So, whose rights were actually walked over? In 2005, the political parties’ respective chairmen of the Equal Opportuneties decided not to follow the Social Ministry’s guidelines. What people did in their private homes and in their free time was their business, but it should not be the public institutions job to parttake in prostitution (Ankestyrelsen SM C-1-06). In some municipalities it was prohibited and in 2007 the municipality of Copenhagen decided to ban it.

Sex workers were successfully framed as victims in this debate, which possibly legitimized and facilitated the continued use of the victim-frame in Denmark. It seems that with this framing, Denmark is now approaching a ban on sexual services and the view of sex workers as voluntary and independent individuals is passed more and more to peripheral arenas such as the sensationalist newspaper Extrabladet.

Related posts:

1. UK Legal Rulings: Sex Trafficking Victims and Sex Workers
2. European Trade Unions, Sex Workers and Organizing Rights

As I recently traveled through Denmark, I grabbed a copy of the Danish edition of the for-free newspaper Metro, where the front page lead story covered the recent law in Norway prohibiting the purchase of sexual services. “Prostitutes warn against prohibition in Denmark”, the headline reads. And in less than 430 words, the word “prohibit” is used another 13 times, including the subhead.

Front page of Metro Denmark, 19 November 2008.

Compare that to the story that the Swedish edition of Metro ran a few days later: While this article, too, describes the Norwegian and Swedish law in terms of a prohibition, the chosen angle is whether Sweden should follow the example set by Norway and prohibit its citizens from purchasing sexual services abroad too.

While two random articles have little analytical value, they say something interesting about the terms in which prostitution is discussed in Denmark and Sweden.

First, note that while Metro Denmark spends roughly half the space interviewing what is described as organised “sex workers”, Metro Sweden instead focuses on politicians’ view of the Norwegian law. This might indicate a difference in terms of whose views are counted as relevant and valid input in a discussion of prostitution policy.

Secondly, the term prohibition has very different connotations in the two national contexts. Danes cultivate an identity of being a bit more easy-going than the stiff Swedes, Norwegians and Finns. Especially, Danish public debate often alludes to Sweden as a horrific example of state intervention and regulation. The 1983 book Tilfældet Sverige established the image of “Prohibitionist Sweden” as an anti-utopia, regulating and outlawing anything that makes life worth living. Denmark, by contrast, is more liberal, more continental, more free-spirited, this story goes.

This national narrative, however, is not necessarily a depiction of reality in Denmark, or, for that matter, in Sweden. In fact, in many areas, Sweden is considerably less regulated than Denmark. While Swedes go to Denmark to buy beer, escaping taxes and the state-run liquour monopoly, Danes have crossed the Øresund to buy cheap fashion from Swedish outlets, because unlike in Sweden, zoning laws in Denmark prohibit shopping malls on city outskirts.

And if you happen to live in Denmark and have forgotten to buy your Sunday breakfast, you’d better check the Lukkeloven (Opening Hours Act). Yes, unlike overregulated Sweden, liberal Denmark has a law which states, among other things, that shops must be closed from 5 pm on Saturdays to 6 am on Mondays, except for eight Sundays a year, while tractors, pets, tents and plants may be sold every Sunday, and bread, milk, and newspapers may also be sold on Sundays and national holidays from 7 to 11 pm, but only in shops which sell newspapers and dairy products in the weekdays too.

Yet, true or false, this Danish self-image provides the deeper ideational framework in terms of which prostitution policy is cast in Denmark, so aptly caught in the Metro story: We Danes don’t like prohibitionism.

However, this is just one piece of the puzzle. From our ideational approach to policy change, the bigger question is how Danish policy makers have successfully employed this framing of prohibitions as something intrinsically bad and un-Danish, in order to discredit alternatives to the current prostitution policy – and why norm entrepreneurs in Denmark advocating the Swedish and Norwegian models have failed to graft their policy proposals onto these underlying discursive frames.

Related posts:

1. The Danish election: a new government – and towards a new prostitution regime?