The Sex Industry in New Zealand: A Literature Review
Foreword | Acknowledgements | Tables | Executive summary | Part I: The Sex Industry in New Zealand | Part II: Overseas Models of Prostitution Law Reform Evaluations | References | Appendix I: Methodological issues in researching clients of sex workers
Introduction and
methodology
Background
Definitions of terms
History of the sex industry in New
Zealand
Size, structure and organisation
Sex workers:
characteristics and backgrounds
Entry into sex work
Motivations
underlying entry into the sex industry
Drugs and child sexual abuse
Managing the impacts
of involvement in sex work
Male sex workers
Transgendered sex workers
Illegal immigrants and
prostitution
Exiting sex work
Clients: characteristics
and motivations
Sex worker safety
Sex worker exploitation
Health issues
Control and empowerment issues
Prostitution and organised crime
Prostitution of persons under 18
Sex tourism
Initial responses to
legislation change
Overview
This literature review was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice, and is intended to provide an assessment of the state of the sex industry in New Zealand in the years leading up to the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.
In June 2003, the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 repealed the prostitution-related legislation on our statute books and created a new legal environment for the sex industry. How this will translate within the social context remains to be seen, but in order to be able to assess and review the impact of this legislation it is necessary to establish current benchmarks. The aim of the literature review presented here is to contribute towards the provision of these benchmarks by providing a document for use by those charged with reviewing the legislation, as well as by others for whom such an overview would be relevant.
Within this broad context, particular aims were identified which involved the need to establish baseline information to assist with the subsequent review of the Act, examining in particular the following specified areas:
In order to achieve these aims, the methods adopted involved a variety of strategies designed to assist in identifying, locating and accessing relevant publications. These included:
To identify further relevant material, key personnel were contacted and asked to assist, including reference librarians, university and government researchers both in New Zealand and overseas, and members of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective.
Approaches were also made to Parliament to obtain access to the submissions and papers gathered during the lead-up to the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. These are referred to sparingly, and primarily where they add to the discussion because they enable presentation of evidence from those with direct connections to the sex industry – voices and perspectives that may otherwise be missing.
In drafting the review, emphasis was placed on utilising a ‘mix’ of New Zealand and international research in order to be able to provide a context within which to assess local issues and developments. In particular, because of our proximity to Australia and similarities in our historical and social development, emphasis was placed on reviewing significant legislative reforms there, where they were considered relevant to experiences in this country.
While every reasonable effort was made to provide quality assurance (for instance, by checking source credibility, relying heavily on articles obtained from refereed journals etc), the nature of the subject under scrutiny necessitated some compromises. The decision was made to incorporate aspects of personal narrative and anecdotal accounts where it was felt that these either enabled comment on issues that would otherwise have been overlooked, or provided a window into how individuals were impacted upon by various initiatives.
The campaign for prostitution law reform in New Zealand ran a long and chequered course before the final bill was passed. The principal reasons for changing the existing laws emerged from the inherent difficulties of enforcing those very laws, and the double standard they perpetuated. The legislation had, through the use of criminal sanctions, sought to prohibit sex workers’ soliciting, keeping or managing brothels, living on the earnings, or procuring others for the purposes of prostitution. A licensing system existed for massage parlour operators, with all staff employed being listed, and with police access to staff registers. Whilst the numbers of convictions were few, and were mostly for soliciting, the existence of this legislation created a climate of fear and worked against the interests of sex worker safety and public health. For any worker who was convicted, typically after a ‘street sweep’ or an undercover raid on premises, the consequences were dire. Possessing a prostitution-related conviction stayed with that person for life, branding him or her and affecting subsequent employment, travel, and access to finance. Meanwhile the clients of sex workers remained outside the reach of the law, with few checks on their behaviour.
Law and health interests clashed, with cases existing where the presence of safer sex products was used as evidence of prostitution. There was no obligation on operators to provide safer sex information, and workers had little redress if pressured, by either clients or operators, to engage in unsafe sex. Under the Massage Parlours Act 1978, any sex worker receiving a drugs or prostitution related conviction was banned from working in a massage parlour for up to ten years, a move which saw some forced into the riskier work venues of the streets or escort agencies.
The campaign for law reform was supported by a highly diverse range of people, motivated by a desire to see a more equitable and practical solution. Many of those supporting reform were clear that they were not condoning prostitution itself, but recognising its current existence within society and the limitations and inadequacies of existing legislation. A harm minimisation approach was favoured by many, and the resultant legal changes sought to reflect such sentiments.
International options for prostitution law reform were considered and revealed four main alternatives:
The final measure adopted in New Zealand was essentially a decriminalised model with some elements of legalisation apparent within it – for instance, in relation to the licensing system for operators of brothels employing four or more workers. The principal aims of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 are:
This review presents a survey of written materials documenting the nature of the New Zealand sex industry in the years leading up to the law change, emphasising in particular research from 1980 onwards.
Defining ‘prostitution’ is the first challenge. While the term may initially appear to be self-evident, on closer examination various definitional complexities emerge.
Prostitution is commonly defined as "the exchange of money for sex" (O’Neill, 1997, 10), "buying and selling sexual services for cash payment" (Hoigard and Finstad, 1992, 8). But does money have to change hands, and what counts as sex? The first may be easier to establish, with it generally being accepted that alternatives to cash can be exchanged – for example, the provision of other goods or substances, or possibly access to resources or positions. The definition of ‘sex’ may be more difficult, since whilst popular understanding assumes this to denote sexual intercourse, a wide range of sexual services exist for exchange, including practically anything that any person finds sexually exciting or satisfying. An earlier definition hints at this when defining prostitution as "the partial or complete specialization of certain women in the satisfaction of the masculine instinct" (Henriques, 1962, 15), although more recent interpretations would question the existence of just one form of masculine instinct and recognise gay male prostitution as well as the possibility of women being the clients.
Even more complexities emerge when attempting to define who is a ‘prostitute’. Conventional marriage relationships have been described as involving the exchange of money for sexual services, with men playing the role of economic provider while women were historically unable in law to refuse their husband’s sexual advances – sex on demand was the breadwinner’s prerogative. Yet few would seriously equate the roles of wife and prostitute, despite such commonalities. Prostitutes were understood to provide sexual services for money outside of the marriage bond, but should everyone who makes such an exchange be perceived in this way? The term ‘prostitute’ has been used as an identity-tag, in ways far exceeding the limits of other occupational terms. Thus a person who is a teacher or a nurse or a waitress is understood to have a life and identity outside of their occupation, in ways that a prostitute is often not. Typically the word ‘prostitute’ is used in our society to denote not only an occupation but an identity, conferring a social role and stigma to the wearer of such a tag.
For reasons such as this, many prostitutes’ rights groups have sought to replace the term ‘prostitute’ with the phrase ‘sex worker’, to denote the work and occupational realities of the title. As O’Neill adds to her definition of prostitution:
the exchange of money for sex - use value for exchange value (as in all forms of work). (O’Neill, 1997, 10).
The sex worker provides sexual services as part of a job contract in ways similar to a barber providing hairdressing services or a doctor medical services. Outside of working hours, the sex worker, like the barber and the doctor, is a citizen who may also be a parent, pet-owner, part-time gardener, amateur astronomer, or whatever.
The question then arises as to who should be regarded as a sex worker – for example, does the term apply only to those who self-identify as sex workers? Only those for whom sex work is their primary occupation? Presumably one can be a casual sex worker or an occasional sex worker, but should estimates of the numbers involved in sex worker populations then include such persons? What about the student who attends university four days a week, while working part-time in a bar and one night a week in a massage parlour? Or the stripper who is adamant she does not see herself as a prostitute but occasionally has sex after the show with a paying client? The combination of such powerful entities as sex and money makes for complexity. In writing about gay and transgendered sex workers in New Zealand, Heather Worth has asked:
…what actually constitutes payment? When does sex for survival become sex-work? Is sex-work just an economic necessity or a way of finding an identity as gay or queer? (Worth, 2003, 161).
Questions such as these illustrate some of the many complexities involved. They demonstrate that the boundary lines between what is, and what is not, prostitution may be blurred at times. Typically it is less threatening to perceive prostitutes as a distinct and different group, as a deviant group, as "the other", rather than noticing these complexities and acknowledging the ways in which many more subtle exchanges around sexual access can be made.
History of the sex industry in New Zealand
While often simply referred to as ‘the oldest profession’, increasing efforts have been made internationally to document more fully the history of prostitution (for example, Bullough and Bullough, 1987; Philip, 1991; Roberts, 1992). This trend has been evident within New Zealand also, reflecting a greater preparedness to acknowledge aspects of both colonial and contemporary life that were previously kept largely hidden.
Such accounts show that New Zealand has had a sex industry since the early days of European colonisation, when whalers and traders traded muskets and other goods for sexual access to Māori women (Belich, 1996; Donne, 1927). Historians have noted the considerable interaction that occurred between Pacific Island women and the sailors who charted Pacific waters from the eighteenth century onwards (Chappell, 1992). As one historian, Fernando Henriques, described it:
The coming of a European ship manned by lust-hungry sailors was, not to put too fine a point upon it, hardly conducive to ordinary methods of barter and exchange. The desire for women on the part of the sailors, and the desire for iron on the part of the part of the people, was resolved in a type of prostitution where the price of a woman was a nail. (Henriques, 1962, 409).
This system of exchange is referred to in Captain Samuel Wallis's journal of his voyage around the world in 1767, in which he describes the way in which Tahitian women were sent out by their fathers and husbands to sleep with his sailors in exchange for nails. The captain was in fact relieved to discover that this was what was happening since he had been puzzled as to why his ship was slowly disintegrating around him as its nails were systematically removed! (Ibid).
In New Zealand trade was particularly brisk in the whaling port of Kororareka in the Bay of Islands, where it was reported:
At this time it was the practice to permit single girls to visit the ship and remain on board over nights, sometimes for several days; the recompense being a nail, gimlet, chisel, hammer, saw, tomahawk, axe, or gun. It is alleged that a chief, named Pomare, maintained in the Bay of Islands one hundred girls, ninety four to be exact, for the purpose of participating in these maritime picnics. (Donne, 1927).
The earliest legislation concerned with prostitution derived from the English Vagrancy Act 1824, which could be invoked against a "prostitute wandering in the public street or in any place of public resort and behaving in a riotous or indecent manner" (Eldred-Grigg, 1984, 31). This Act remained in force until New Zealand passed its own Vagrant Act 1866, which was repealed with the introduction of the Police Offences Act 1884. The 1884 Act contained provisions relating to ‘common prostitutes’ soliciting or importuning passers-by. The widespread use of the term ‘common prostitute’ throughout most Commonwealth countries at the time was not intended to imply ordinariness on the part of the woman, but to convey a sense of her being ‘common’ or ‘public’ property (Knight, 1987). Inherent within such a description was the sense that these women lacked discrimination, a status which seemed often to be a licence for them to be discriminated against.
Prostitution flourished during the early years of the new colony, and during gold-mining days when money and alcohol were abundant and women were few in number. Edward Gibbon Wakefield himself had predicted that the unbalanced sex ratio would create a market for prostitution and the men of the new colony did not prove him wrong. The influx of young men to the Otago goldfields during the 1860s, for example, was linked to a growing demand for prostitution services, followed by moves to outlaw dancing girls in hotels (Olssen, 1999). Interestingly, prominent citizens established institutions not only to accommodate burgeoning numbers of illegitimate and unwanted children, but also to provide homes for the rehabilitation of prostitutes (ibid.). As historian Erik Olssen has observed:
For many colonists, prostitution and syphilis represented the most degraded Old World ills from which they had fled. (Olssen, 1999, 47).
Considerable debate arose regarding perceptions of the moral quality of single immigrant women, with Maria Rye, the founder of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, declaring the upper attics of the Otago immigration barracks to be "occupied by a body of women known only to night and evil deeds" (quoted in Olssen, 1999, 47). By 1864 it was claimed that Dunedin could boast 200 full-time prostitutes (ibid.), with many brothels congregated in an area called the ‘Devil’s Half Acre’ (Mead, 2001, 35). Most sizeable towns throughout the colony had a ‘red-light’ district (Olssen, 1999).
The relationship of female immigration and prostitution was somewhat paradoxical in that young single women were sought as immigrants to reduce the sex imbalance and improve the men’s behaviour, yet were simultaneously blamed for providing prostitution services when they arrived here (Eldred-Grigg, 1984; Jordan, 1993a, 1993b; Macdonald, 1986). Mounting concern over the ‘social evil’ led to the passing of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1869, legislation which sought to regulate prostitution by subjecting any woman deemed to be a ‘common prostitute’ to forcible medical examination and detention (Eldred-Grigg, 1984; Knight, 1987; Lichtenstein, 1997; Macdonald, 1986; Robinson, 1983). It was left to police discretion to ascertain who was a ‘common prostitute’, with the onus then being placed on the woman to prove she was not, if she objected to being so treated and classified. The legislation also made it an offence for house-owners to let rooms to women known to be common prostitutes who were also suffering from any venereal disease.
The Contagious Diseases Act was the first major legal intervention into prostitution in New Zealand and was characterised by strong adherence to a double standard of morality (Kehoe, 1989; Macdonald, 1986; Robinson, 1983). Women deemed to be prostitutes could be removed by the police and subjected to compulsory genital examination at the hands of a police surgeon; then, if found to have a venereal disease, they were removed to a ‘lock hospital’ (a gaol or hospital ward run like a gaol). No such assault on their bodies or their freedom was experienced by their male clients, many of whom felt they benefited from such procedures. In fact, the only voice in Parliament to debate the passing of this legislation came from the Premier, William Fox, who, as well as fearing that such legislation officially sanctioned prostitution, also claimed its provisions would be ineffectual if not applied to men also. It was at this juncture that Rolleston made his famous reply asserting that such measures would be effective because:
the one sex made a trade of the matter, and spread the disease, but it was quite a different thing with the other sex. (quoted in Macdonald, 1986, 22).
As this example shows, along with many societies internationally, New Zealand adhered to a legislative aim of regulating and controlling the sex industry rather than seeking the elimination of prostitution itself. Historically our laws reflected a double standard of morality in that surveillance, control and criminal sanctions were typically focussed on sex workers rather than their clients, whose access to prostitutes was both guaranteed and protected. By contrast, prostitutes were reviled as members of an underclass, with groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Council of Women in the late nineteenth century mounting attacks against them and barmaids for being the two female groups identified as posing the largest threats to the family unit (Grigg, 1983). Women’s movements began campaigning for measures to enhance the nation’s ‘moral purity’, one of the goals associated with the women’s suffrage movement (Brookes, 1993). In 1899 pressure was placed, unsuccessfully, on the Auckland City Council to introduce a curfew prohibiting standing on the streets, with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union hoping this might curb soliciting by young girls. The police at that time estimated there to be about 800 prostitutes working in Auckland, ‘ "not merely in the slums of the city, but in the respectable streets too" ’ (quoted in Eldred-Grigg, 1984, 163). Fears were expressed that Queen Street resembled little more than ‘ "a parade for immoral characters" ’, while at the same time police records in Christchurch identified at least 92 "quiet" and 23 "rowdy" brothels (ibid.; also Robinson, 1983).
Large brothels had been relatively common in the colony, some catering specifically for a gentrified clientele, but a legal loophole resulted in the mounting popularity of one-woman brothels, a trend that caused considerable concern. In the early twentieth century, a campaign to close one-woman brothels was mounted which, even though they were not strictly illegal, resulted in the police using a variety of unorthodox measures in their attempts to eradicate them (Dalley, 1996). As the sex ratios balanced out and sexual mores relaxed, the demand for prostitution services abated somewhat (Eldred-Grigg, 1984). Anxieties concerning prostitution again became pronounced during the First World War, with New Zealand health campaigner Ettie Rout becoming well-known for her efforts to combat venereal disease in Kiwi soldiers (O’Connor, 1967; Tolerton, 1992). By 1922, however, the police claimed they knew of only 104 professional prostitutes within the entire country and a Board of Health committee said there remained ‘ "little evidence of a definite prostitute class in New Zealand" ’ (Eldred-Grigg, 1984, 164). The Second World War, however, saw anxieties rise
again as American soldiers included New Zealand women in their ‘rest and recuperation’ activities, and concerns about venereal disease and the morality of ‘good time girls’ increased.
Post-war, despite the emphasis on resettling and happy families during the 1950s, there is little indication that the demand for prostitution services abated. Indeed the controversial Mazengarb Report suggests concerns about youth immorality and involvement in the sex industry were growing, and the high profile Auckland parlour run by Flora McKenzie seems to have flourished during this period (Jordan, 1991a, 2000). This was also a time when anxieties about ship girls resulted in them being sent to borstal in their droves (Jordan, 1994). Claire Templeton’s account describes how women who went on the ships would also often work the streets and night clubs, but it was the ships that were the most dangerous given the risks of falling overboard while ‘out of it’ (Templeton, 1981).
The women’s rights and gay liberation movements of the 1970s began drawing public attention to the double standard and to abuses of human rights, but as support for these issues grew, a new spectre appeared on the horizon – HIV/AIDS. Sex workers and gay males found themselves at the centre of another moral panic, blamed and scapegoated as disease carriers threatening society’s health and stability (Janssen, 1997; McKeganey and Barnard, 1994; Robinson and Kehoe, 1989).
The events and developments outlined above provide the backdrop to the recent legislative changes and provide a context for understanding the strength of the opposition to prostitution law reform. The last ten years have seen community fears being regularly challenged by attempts to debunk the mythology surrounding prostitution, with increasing numbers of books and articles profiling sex workers’ lives (for example, Hanson, 1996; Jordan, 1991c; Perkins, 1991). More recently, individual sex workers have begun penning their own accounts (Beyer, 1999; Carmen, 1988; Kempadoo and Doezema, 1998; Nagle, 1997; Turvey, 1999), while the 15-year campaign for prostitution law reform saw a plethora of interview-based articles in glossy magazines (for example, "The Oldest Profession", More, May 1987; "The Big Sleazy: How they Sell Sex in Auckland", Metro, November 1988). Crimes involving sex workers also sparked periods of acute interest in the industry, such as the bondage and discipline session that accidentally resulted in the death of prominent cricket umpire, Peter Plumley Walker (Harder, 1991). New Zealanders could no longer ignore the existence of either the providers of such services or their prominent clientele.
It is clear that prostitution has long been an established part of the social environment, with changes in debates around it being provoked more by shifts in ideologies and perceptions than significant increases in its incidence. Although several books include large sections on prostitution (e.g. Macdonald, 1986; Robinson, 1987) much of the New Zealand material documenting its growth and characteristics can be found in the many theses devoted to this topic (for example, Gillingham, 1998; Janssen, 1997; Kinder, 1994; Robinson, 1983; Roguski, 1997).
One of the most significant developments in recent years has been the establishment of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) (Jordan, 1991c, 1993c; Lichtenstein, 1997). A small group of sex workers started this initiative in 1987 as a means of providing support and education for those working in the sex industry, with the first office opening in Wellington in October 1988, followed by bases in Auckland and Christchurch (Saskia, 1989). The formation of NZPC echoed similar moves made internationally as prostitutes began increasingly to band together in their efforts "to move the image of prostitution from sex as sin to sex as work" (Dew and Kirkman, 2002, 69). Today the Collective advocates for, and provides support and services to, sex workers in many parts of New Zealand. Organisers regularly attend international conferences, participate in research ventures, and have been seconded by WHO (World Health Organisation) to act as safer-sex educators in the Asia-Pacific region (Lichtenstein, 1997). NZPC has successfully obtained Government funding for an extensive outreach programme providing HIV testing, health education, and condom distribution, whilst also working in conjunction with a drug and needle exchange programme (Worth, 2003). An article documenting New Zealand’s efforts in HIV/AIDS prevention has observed:
The government’s decision to give funding, resources, and support for HIV-prevention activities to gay men, sex workers, and injecting drug users might have paid off…. The number of HIV-positive New Zealand-born prostitutes is thought to be extremely low, although relevant data are unavailable…. Although concerns persist about ‘new’ modes of transmission by way of sex-tourism in Asia, it is likely that New Zealand’s AIDS epidemic is on the decline. (Lichtenstein, 1997, 85).
Size, structure and organisation
The sex industry provides employment, generates high consumer demand for certain products, and makes a distinct contribution to the recreation and tourism sectors of the economy. The sex industry in New Zealand has been described as differing from that in many other countries with regards to the high levels of personal independence held by the majority of the workers (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 1991). In contrast to concerns about pimping raised overseas (Norton-Hawk, 2004), few New Zealand sex workers are associated with pimps and their relative autonomy is an aspect rated highly by many in the industry (Cheney, 1988; Robinson, 1987; Jordan, 1991c; Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 1991). However, despite the relative absence of pimping, issues of coercion and control still exist within the industry and immigrant women working in New Zealand can be subject to debt-bondage arrangements (PRB/WJP/1, 2001,12). Although the term sex industry implies a distinct social grouping, both historical and contemporary evidence indicates a highly stratified industry comprising largely distinct, although at times overlapping, groups of workers.
Sex workers participate in an industry organised to provide sexual services in a variety of ways. The main arenas evident in New Zealand are massage parlours, escort agencies, and street prostitution, with a range of other types existing to lesser degrees. The industry is stratified to some extent along class and ethnic lines, with higher numbers of lower socio-economic and Māori women being employed in some sectors than others (Plumridge and Abel, 2001). These tend to be in environments characterised by higher risk and lower pay than those experienced by most of their Pākehā and middle class counterparts. However, representative numbers of Māori women also work within massage parlour contexts and as private operators. The features of each principal area of the sex industry are outlined below.
‘Ship girls’ operate around the ports, forming liaisons with seamen that may last from one ship’s visit to its next and sometimes evolve into longer lasting relationships. Sex may be exchanged directly for cash, but the arrangements and exchanges made can be more subtle in nature (Robinson, 1987; Jordan, 1991c, 1994). Whereas in the past women often travelled round the ports on coastal vessels, a practice termed ‘ringbolting’, such opportunities are fewer now given changes in services and the growth of containerised shipping.
Street workers, as the name implies, seek trade on the streets, predominantly in the ‘red-light’ areas of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Once an exchange has been negotiated with a prospective client, they take him to a nearby rented room or alleyway, or, more typically, use the client’s own car for the transaction. Most transgendered sex workers work from the streets, as do both numbers of women and male prostitutes. The advantages of street work are seen by some workers as constituting an ability for greater independence over when and where they work, and having no-one else taking a slice of the money (Mead, 2001, 37).
Escort agencies rely on clients phoning to request that a worker be sent to their hotel/motel room or home. The agency then contacts one of its workers, who negotiates any sexual arrangements upon arrival. In these situations the client pays both an agency fee plus a fee to the worker, the latter of which will vary according to the type of sexual service requested. If a driver is used to transport the worker, this may be an extra cost incurred by the worker (Mead, 2001, 37). Hotels and motels are usually preferred sites because they are perceived as safer, and while known to be common practice for years, the issue has recently begun promoting comment from those in the trade. An article entitled, "When guests have ‘guests’ – hotel hanky-panky", began by noting the hospitality industry’s silent tolerance of prostitution:
The issue of prostitutes at hotels and motels is seldom talked about by New Zealand accommodation providers, who are more concerned about room yields and occupancy rates than the sexual preferences of guests. Industry bodies view the subject with a smile rather than with concern – saying that if the prostitutes aren’t annoying other guests or causing damage to their premises, then they tended to be left alone with their ‘clients’. (Hospitality, August 2002, 31).
Independent, private workers tend to work from their own homes or rooms, or provide escort services, and advertise in newspapers and magazines for clients. Male, female and transgendered workers may all advertise in this way, with some offering specialist services for niche markets, such as bondage and discipline or fantasy work. In order to be able to advertise their services in newspapers, until the law change, workers had to be registered with the police and accept any necessary ‘sanitizing’ of their advertisements (Mead, 2001, 37). Also documented have been ‘mobile’ workers, taking services to outlying areas. Thus Mead has noted that some Dunedin sex workers advertise an itinerary and cell phone number several days in advance of visiting towns such as Alexandra, Wanaka, Clyde, and Balclutha (ibid). A recent issue of Hospitality magazine (August 2002) noted that it was commonplace for New Zealand motels to hire out rooms to private escorts on ‘day rates’, typically around $50-$60 dollar per session in the major cities and approximately $40 in regional centres.
Until recently at least, the majority of parlour workers operated through what were euphemistically called ‘massage parlours’ (Robinson, 1987; Jordan, 1991c). The Massage Parlours Act 1978 established a licensing regime for this sector of the industry, which among its licensing provisions declared it to be illegal for sex workers who had received convictions for drug or prostitution-related offences to be employed in such establishments. Since massage parlours were defined in law as public places, workers could be convicted for soliciting on the premises, and were thereby effectively forced into non-licensed arenas if they chose to continue working in prostitution. ‘Rap’ parlours were established as a way around this difficulty, since places for men to come for a chat, rather than a massage, did not require licensing.
In massage parlours, the clients pay the parlour a fee for a massage, then negotiate with an individual worker anything ‘extra’ they might like provided. The masseuses are totally dependent on the provision of ‘extras’ for their income, receiving no wages from the parlour operator. Conversely, they are typically expected to pay the operators for the use of towels, laundry services and other ‘costs’, as well as pay fines if they arrive late, miss a shift, or whatever. The fact that workers may be required to pay a ‘shift fee’ means that if no clients during a shift pay for extras, the worker will be out of pocket, although this rarely happens in practice (Mead, 2001, 36). Many workers consider parlour work to be more desirable than street or escort work because it is safer and more regular (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 1991).
‘Call girls’ and club hostesses tend to cater to the wealthier end of the market, providing discreet services independently or through premises designed to protect client privacy and reputation. The services requested will usually extend beyond the one-hour average offered by parlour workers, and may include accompanying their host to restaurants and events, or even on excursions abroad. In some cases, the worker may move into a long-term arrangement whereby they are financially ‘kept’ and supported in exchange for the client’s exclusive access to them. Such benefactors are often referred to as ‘sugar daddies’, with some foreign businessmen being known to have established a ‘wife’ and home in New Zealand to complement their domestic arrangements back home (Jordan, 1991c). In Wellington, an elite club has operated for many years, allegedly catering to clients from business, sporting, and political arenas who seek services with discretion. The owner has stated that many of the women who work there may themselves be foreign tourists, and he provides them with on-site accommodation while they work as club ‘hostesses’, earning money for further travels (Robinson, 1987; Jordan, 1991c).
While most workers comment on the predictable and routine nature of the sexual services requested, some specialise in arenas offering fantasy sex, bondage and discipline, etc. Several ‘dungeons’ exist, equipped with the paraphernalia needed to provide such services, with the workers involved able to command higher fees for engaging in less standard practices (Jordan, 1991c).
In provincial areas sex industry operations may be more covert and smaller in scale. Thus strip club owners may be more inclined to run prostitution businesses in tandem, with the female employees often being concurrently involved in both activities (New Zealand Police, 2001). The police survey also found evidence of bar girls operating from bars and night clubs in a North Island provincial centre, but conceded that such a practice may be more common and simply lacking in visibility. This view is endorsed in a Christchurch study which also identified a small number of workers operating from similar venues (Plumridge and Abel, 2000).
From the above, it is apparent that a variety of work settings exist, and whilst some workers may move between settings, many have a preference for working in one type of arena (Mead, 2001, 37). A study conducted in Christchurch estimated that more than half of the city’s sex workers (58%) worked in massage parlours, 28% on the streets, and 14% from escort agencies (Plumridge and Abel, 2001). In Dunedin, where the weather is reputedly too cold for street work (Mead, 2001, 37), the industry is estimated to be divided approximately in half between parlour and escort work (ibid).
The authors of the Christchurch survey described the sex industry as ‘segmented’ in the sense that relatively little cross-over appeared to occur between street and indoor work venues (Plumridge and Abel, 2001). There was somewhat more movement from indoor to street venues than vice versa, possibly reflecting the provisions of the Massage Parlour Act 1978 which prohibited individuals convicted of drug or prostitution-related offences from employment in parlours. Some tendency was noted for Māori and younger women to be more likely to be street workers than indoor workers, with street work emerging as a different career-track from indoor work. In this study, the women who worked on the streets were typically younger, started working at an earlier age, and were more likely to use the money for drugs, both on entry to the sex industry and currently.
Although the majority of prostitution encounters occur between female workers providing services for male clients, it is important to note that prostitutes can be male, female, bisexual, or transgendered, as can their clients. Their own sexual identity may or may not be consistent with the sexual services they offer – for example, lesbian sex workers report finding the provision of sexual services for male clients easier to manage because of the separation this enables between their private and public lives (Brown, 1994; Jordan, 1991c).
Trying to estimate the number of sex workers operating in New Zealand is about as difficult as counting glow-worms in a cave. The fact that, until June 2003, sex workers were liable for arrest if apprehended for soliciting, brothel-keeping, or living off the earnings of prostitution meant that most took measures to conceal their participation in the industry. Moreover, definitional issues also affect any such estimates, given the transitory and often part-time nature of many workers’ involvement.
Estimates of the numbers involved in the contemporary sex industry in New Zealand have been consistent in size, possibly because they originated from the same source. For many years the figure estimated by the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective has been in the vicinity of 8000. This figure was cited by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (1991, 2), and more recently by Mead (2001, 35). Auckland, because of its overall population size, has the largest sex industry in the country with a recent estimate suggesting 3,000 prostitutes worked in this city, of whom many were believed to be Asian women working without visas (Maxim Institute, 2002). However, no information was provided regarding the research methodologies on which these estimates were based.
One of the most recent, rigorous efforts to assess the extent of the sex industry was undertaken in June 2001 by the New Zealand Police. They canvassed the major metropolitan cities as well as using a sampling regime for the inclusion of provincial centres, resulting in the following centres being included in their survey: Auckland City, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Henderson, Invercargill, Masterton, New Plymouth, Napier, Nelson, Otahuhu, Palmerston North, Queenstown, Rotorua, Takapuna, Tauranga, Timaru, Wanganui, Wellington, and Whangarei. This assessment identified a total of just under 4500 individual sex workers throughout the areas canvassed, most of whom worked in licensed massage parlours. Other arenas identified and covered in the study included rap/escort parlours, escort agencies, private workers, strip clubs, peep shows, street workers, ship girls, and bar girls. The following table sets out these figures.
Table 1: Number of sex workers by form of employment
| Form of prostitution | Number |
Percentage |
| Massage parlours | 1929 | 43.1% |
| Escort agencies | 1383 | 30.9% |
| Private workers | 700 | 15.6% |
| Strip clubs | 179 | 4.0% |
| Street workers | 112 | 2.5% |
| Ship girls | 98 | 2.2% |
| Rap parlours | 50 | 1.1% |
| Peep shows | 27 | 0.6% |
| Total | 4478 | 100.0% |
Source: New Zealand Police, 2001
In terms of the number of individual sex businesses, in total 306 were identified across all the areas surveyed. These are outlined below.
Table 2: Types of businesses
| Business type | Number |
Percentage |
| Escort agencies | 162 | 53% |
| Massage parlours | 112 | 37% |
| Strip clubs | 16 | 5% |
| Peep shows | 10 | 3% |
| Rap parlours | 6 | 2% |
| Total | 306 | 100% |
Source: New Zealand Police, 2001
Note that New Zealand Police urged care to be taken in the interpretation of the figures given in both the above tables, given such factors as the frequent crossover between workers operating concurrently for different businesses, the lack of a regulated environment, and the use of a sampling regime for centre inclusion.
The Ministry of Justice is currently engaged in a project to collect and collate data to enable as accurate a figure as possible to be determined regarding sex industry participation. As their researchers acknowledge, any such endeavour will be limited and can only produce an estimated population size, given the hidden and transient nature of the industry.
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