he recent proposal by the National Commission for Women to legalise

prostitution has opened up an old debate. It is a misnomer that legalisation

would lead to improving the lives of women in prostitution by way of
reduced harassment by the police and provision of healthcare facilities.
Advocates of legalisation should first examine the experience of countries
where prostitution has been legalised. The mere fact that licensing has
been or is being tried out in countries such as Australia, the Netherlands
and Thailand does not by itself justify the automatic and unthinking
transfer of the ideology, policy or law. Women in these countries are
increasingly finding that their situation has, in fact, worsened after
legalisation.
Legalisation can lead to an unprecedented spurt in the trafficking of women
and children for prostitution/ commercial sexual exploitation. Once
legalised, it will become extremely difficult for civil society groups and the
police to enter premises that have been granted the licence for prostitution,
and rescue minors or adult women who may be forcefully kept there
against their will.
The presumption that harassment of women in prostitution would stop as a
result of legalisation is flawed. The licensing process, renewal, inspection,
certification, fines, cancellation of the licence, etc will increase the scope for
further exploitation and harassment of women, who will now have to
depend on a new set of agents and pimps to sustain their lives. It is
necessary to distinguish between sympathy and real and tangible
assistance. Merely giving licences/ permits does not lead to automatic
improvement of the highly negative and, at times, dangerous conditions
under which commercialised prostitution functions.
The legalisation position rests on a single premise women will be issued
licences by the state health department to carry on prostitution in a
specified area and, in return, will be provided identity cards and minimum
health and welfare benefits. Experience has shown that prostitution
continues to have no social sanction and, therefore, remains clandestine in
nature, even in countries where it has been legalised. In such a situation,
women are reluctant to register themselves as sex workers, since it
means getting identified by government authorities. Also, the issue and
renewal of licence is subject to a health clearance, which means being
STD- and HIV-free. What will then happen to those who are infected?
The existence of minimum services in terms of healthcare, child welfare,
ration cards, etc may provide temporary relief for some women in the trade.
However, it may not lead to substantive changes in the long run, when
women are eventually forced out of the trade due to illness, old age,
unemployability or destitution. Currently, such women are forced to service
customers in many undignified ways in order to make ends meet. They
have no access to any socio-economic services or schemes and face

disconnection from the family and the community. One cannot understand
how legalisation will improve their lives.
Before licensing is seriously tabled as a proposition, the infrastructure that
the government proposes to create as a social security net should also be
made public, and NGOs working in this field should be mandatorily
consulted. A major concern here is with regard to the children of these
women. The danger of girl-children getting pulled into the trade remains
high, while the boys may become accessories to the trade.
Legalisation will be a direct blow to the struggle led by many womens
organisations and NGOs to rehabilitate women and children forced into
prostitution, in a society where culturally women are under considerable
scrutiny in terms of their marital/ familial status. Licensing cannot be
construed as a genuine programme of womens emancipation, but only as
a half-hearted attempt to provide economic legitimacy to poverty-stricken
families, and promoted by agencies that have advocated the concept of
commercial sex work. This position has no correspondence in the sordid
reality whereby the trade is carried on in the sex districts.
Significant achievements have been made through years of hard struggle
by the womens movement, whereby prostitution is finally being viewed as
involving trafficking of women and minors, requiring criminal action against
traffickers, preventive measures in source districts and rehabilitative action
in destination districts to free the survivors of trafficking from this worst form
of exploitation and slavery.
Experience shows that, while rehabilitation is a long-drawn-out process and
requires the support of family, community and/ or state, it is an achievable
goal. The state has to play a proactive role towards formulating a
policy and scheme for the rehabilitation of persons coming out of
prostitution/ commercial sexual exploitation. This view clashes with the
view that sex work is a free-choice income option for women in difficult
circumstances. Any move to legalise prostitution is the logical conclusion to
the latter view.
The writer is professor and chairperson, Centre for Criminology and
Justice, School of Social Work, TISS
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