"For their own good?": sex work, social control and social workers, a historical perspective

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Dec, 2002 by Stephanie Wahab

This article provides an overview of the social responses to prostitution since the mid 1800s and how the responses of social workers have been shaped by shifting social contexts. Understanding the complex interplay of these forces is key to mapping out the divergent social work practice approaches with sex workers and their influence over time. The article presents three main constructs which have influenced social work responses to sex work; 1) the notion that women needed to be protected for their own good, 2) competing class values and, 3) social control.

Introduction

Social work practice with women who exchange sex for material goods dates back to the beginnings of the social work profession in the settlements, benevolent societies and charity organizations. This article provides an overview of the social responses to prostitution since the mid 1800s and how the responses of social workers have been shaped by shifting social contexts. Understanding the complex interplay of these forces is key to mapping out the divergent social work practice approaches with sex workers and their influence over time. As social workers are increasingly called upon to `intervene' in sex work related issues via public health, social welfare and policy, an understanding of past motivations and forces informing service creation and delivery holds the potential to facilitate increasingly sensitive and responsive programs for female sex workers.

The grounding premise of this paper is that social work involvement with prostitution demonstrates the extent to which social work practice reflects larger social beliefs and values. It will be argued that social work responses to sex work have been located within a constant effort to negotiate the influence of social reins on women and sex workers, and those forces which have helped shape our profession. This article identifies three main constructs that have influenced social work response to sex work: 1) the notion that women needed to be protected for their own good; 2) social control and competing class values and; 3) the fear of sex, specifically female sexuality. The third construct concerning female sexuality is interconnected and infused with the first and second constructs in the discussion that follows.

Protecting Women For Their Own Good

Evangelical Reformers

In every period, from the early social workers in the Evangelical movement, the Charity Organization Societies (COS) and the settlements, to present day interventions with women struggling with substance use, women on AFDC, or street youth, social work practice in this domain is threaded through with beliefs about what constitutes reasonable, and indeed moral conduct, particularly for women. The idea that women need to be protected for their own good is grounded in a sexist view of women that perceives women as "less capable" than their male counterparts. The more a woman deviated from what was considered acceptable female conduct, the more she was seen as lacking in moral character and the weaker she was perceived to be. Many of both early and more contemporary social workers considered prostitutes the weakest of the weak. Rarely have sex workers been regarded as the experts on their own lives. Rather, they have historically been perceived by the social work profession as incapable of taking care of themselves and therefore in need of protection.

Much of the early social work practice with prostitutes took the form of evangelical work during the mid 1800s. Evangelical female moral reformers tended to be from the middle and upper classes. Although they focused their efforts on the "dangerous" lower classes, they were also concerned with the upper class women, whom they believed had no one to chaperone them.

Because society did not have a place for women who had lost their virtue, evangelical reformers took it upon themselves to attempt to control male sexual aggression in order to protect women. Overall, their efforts included: 1) advocacy for legal remedies to punish men who violated chastity codes; 2) coercion of men to marry the women they had seduced and; 3) the urging of women to form alliances that they hoped would eventually compel men to adopt similar norms of behavior and accountability that were applied to women. Reform societies such as the New England Female Moral Reform Society were created to:

   ... guard our daughters, sisters, and female acquaintances from the
   delusive arts of corrupt and unprincipled men and to bring back to the
   paths of virtue those who have been drawn aside through the wiles of the
   destroyer (Hobson, 1987 p. 55).

The Society's interventions included a moral reform journal named the Friend of Virtue that warned women of male aggressiveness. Steeped in the moral earnestness of evangelical Christianity, the Friend of Virtue admonished women to watch out for libertine men cloaked in respectability.

Concerned with the urban moral order, female reformers endeavored to assert society's right to influence every aspect of personal behavior (Pivar, 1973). Consequently, moral reformers found themselves seduced by illicit sexuality. Reformers of this period regarded non-marital sexual relationships as always being a result of the exploitation of women, never an issue of freedom of sexual expression as has been argued in more contemporary times. They viewed the sexual double standard as an extension of the imbalance of power between the sexes (Hobson, 1987; Rosen, 1982). In fact, they linked prostitution to male dominance in economic, political, and social life. Prostitutes, according to the reformers, were victims of male aggression and prostitution was analyzed in terms of women's lack of protection rather than their lack of equal rights.