সোমবার, ৩ অক্টোবর, ২০১৬

Commercial sex in Finland


My material is collected in Finland where the high level of social security benefits puts prostitutes into a relatively good position. Because every citizen is guaranteed a certain standard of living, forced prostitution is rare. Most of the prostitutes work as independent call girls –  considered in many countries as elite sex workers (O’Connel Davidson 1998, 88). Thanks to the free education, sex workers usually stay in business less than five years.

However, there are also in Finland whole groups of sex workers who don’t have clear control over their work. The field of prostitution is divided ethnically: the Finns offer traditional sex services (incalls/outcalls) and special services, the Thais offer erotic massage and the Russians and Estonians visiting Finland usually offer only traditional sex services. Because Russian sex workers usually do not speak Finnish, they are not capable of answering the telephone and thereby screening their customers. And when they have to work under the threat of deportation and can’t trust the protection of the police, they have a much higher probability of facing violence and getting robbed than their Finnish or Estonian colleagues. (Kontula 2005.)

As the new communication technology is becoming more and more common and changes are being made in legislation (eg. Criminalizing soliciting, making foreign prostitutes liable to deportation), the internet is gradually replacing streets, restaurants and newspapers as a way of finding customers. The parties of Finnish prostitution use the Internet in many ways. Apart from the advertising of services, both customers and sex workers have discussion channels, together and separately. Prostitutes have a common “black list” for the telephone numbers of unwanted clients. There are also some customers and sex workers who write a web diary about commercial acts they have experienced[1].


Currently, there are some eight thousand prostitutes working in Finland each year, half of them Finns and the majority working part-time. On a daily basis, about a quarter, and during the year one third of them work with or under the control of a pimp[2]. A proportion of prostitution is associated with serious social problems such as crime, poverty, social marginalization and drug abuse. Those all exist in Finland but not on a large scale. The beginning of substitution treatment has cut down the proportion of injecting drug users in prostitution. Safe sex is common in commercial relationships

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