Student sex work is a current phenomenon all over the world; study found no difference in happiness between student sex workers and non-sex working students

Students in the Sex Industry: Motivations, Feelings, Risks, and Judgments. Felicitas Ernst1 et al. Front. Psychol., February 25 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.586235

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1364960192933343233

Abstract: Student sex work is a current phenomenon all over the world, increasingly reported by the media in recent years. However, student sex work remains under-researched in Germany and is lacking direct first-hand reports from the people involved. Further, sex work remains stigmatized, and therefore, students practicing it could be at risk of social isolation and emotional or physical danger. Therefore, this study examines students working in the sex industry focusing on their personal experiences and attitudes toward them. An online questionnaire was completed by 4386 students from Berlin universities. Students who identified themselves as sex workers (n = 227) were questioned with respect to their motivations to enter the sex industry, characteristics of their job, feelings after the intercourse, and perceived risks. Student non-sex workers (n = 2998) were questioned regarding knowledge of and attitudes toward student sex workers. Most student sex workers reported that they entered the sex industry due to financial reasons (35.7%). The majority reported offering services involving direct sexual intercourse. Disclosing their job to friends, family, or others was associated with less problems with social isolation and in romantic relationships. With a total of 22.9%, student non-sex workers reported never having heard about students working in the sex industry. The most frequent emotions mentioned by them with regard to student sex workers were compassion and dismay (48.9%). There was no difference in happiness between student sex workers and non-sex working students. Through this research, it becomes evident that there are similarities between the student’s motivations to enter the sex industry, their feelings, and the problems they have to face. Moreover, prejudices still prevail about the life of student sex workers. Increasing understanding of student sex work might help those sex workers to live a less stigmatized life and thereby to make use of support from others. The universities as institutions could form the basis for this, e.g., by openly supporting student sex workers. This could help to encourage the rights of student sex workers and to gain perspective with respect to the sex industry.

Discussion

The aims of this exploratory study were (a) to gain a first insight into primary motivations driving students in Berlin, a major German metropolitan area, to enter the sex industry and to examine characteristics of their work, their feelings, and risks connected to the work; and (b) to investigate judgments and attitudes by non-sex working students toward student sex workers.

Motivations to Enter the Sex Industry

The most frequent services offered by students working in the sex industry were prostitution in the narrow sense, meaning sexual intercourse for money (21.6%) and escort services including sexual intercourse (18.5%). Previous studies, however, reported that student sex workers more often offer services excluding rather than including direct sexual–monetary exchange (Roberts et al., 2013; Sagar et al., 2015a). As these studies by Roberts et al. (2013) and Sagar et al. (2015a) were conducted in countries demanding relatively high student fees, the different results are surprising. Since in Berlin student loans do not exist to this extent, one could assume that the students would not have to improve their financial situation by means of sex work. In this study, most sex workers (35.7%) stated that their primary motivation to enter the sex industry was indeed the possibility to obtain a higher income than in other jobs; only 4.0% stated that this was not important for them. A few (20.3%) opted for financial hardship as primary motivation, while nearly the same amount (15.9%) stated that this was not important. Financial hardship might therefore not be the only reason to enter the sex industry. Other reasons might include the flexibility of the job, as students are often not able to work regularly due to their studies. This is in line with the finding of Jenkins (2006), who also ascertained that financial hardship was not always the most relevant motivation for students to enter the sex industry. It was rather the fact of gaining higher income in a more flexible way than in other jobs. However, there are some students who stated that they entered the sex industry due to a critical financial situation.

Research by Sagar et al. (2015a) stated that both female as well as male students are working in the sex industry; sex work was even found to be more common among men than women. The current study did not find differences in gender within the student sex workers. Additionally, the study showed no difference between female and male sex workers with respect to several variables: no difference was found, among others, in the services they offer, in the motivations to enter the sex industry, or in experiencing violence. Regarding experiencing stigma, this study took a more generalized approach and did not take into account the differences between people’s experiences (e.g., with respect to gender or ethnicity), which would be of interest for future studies.

Frequency and Payment

Regarding the appointments with clients and the payment student sex workers receive, the results found in this study were similar to previous studies (Kontula, 2008; Sagar et al., 2015a). Sagar et al. (2015a) reported that most students (54.1%) work less than five hours per week and 51.3% earn less than €300 per month.

Disclosing Work to Others

Most students stated that they chose to disclose their job to friends or to their partner, which mirrors findings from Roberts et al. (2013). Only a few student sex workers stated not having disclosed their job to someone else; consequences were increased problems in their partnerships and increased social isolation. Furthermore, there was a tendency of student sex workers who disclosed their job to someone else being happier than those who did not disclose their job. Previous studies showed that student sex workers suffer most when they feel like they are not able to talk to anyone about their profession (Sagar et al., 2015a). This might be a consequence of the taboo and the stigmatization of sex work. A previous study examining sex workers in Hong Kong showed that stigma can have several negative effects on mental as well as physical health (Wong et al., 2011): this includes direct forms of bullying, physical and verbal violence, as well as rather indirect forms through which the sex workers feel the need to isolate themselves socially and fear utilizing the help available (e.g., health services). As seen in the study at hand, there are several problems that sex workers have to face. However, lowering the taboo of the profession and being able to talk openly about it might help to reduce some of these problems, such as social isolation, mental stress, and health risks (Wong et al., 2011; Armstrong, 2019).

Experiences of the Work

In our study, 37% of the students working in the sex industry did not experience violence while conducting their job; only 5.7% stated having experienced violence. This might be due to the fact that many student sex workers (43.6%) stated being protected by someone while conducting their job. These results are in line with the finding reported by Sagar et al. (2015a) that only a minority of student sex workers reported a lack of safety in the job; 75.5% stated to feel safe very often or always while conducting their job. Despite this, there are some students who stated to have experienced violence to which one should pay attention. The types of violence students referenced included both physical violence from clients as well as verbal abuse from others. It is assumed that removing the stigma around student sex work may help to make the profession safer (Armstrong, 2019). Previous studies showed that violence perpetrated against sex workers is often a consequence of stereotypical and hostile views toward sex workers (Sanders, 2016). Challenging such negative stereotypes and stigmatization may therefore help to build respect for sex workers and, in doing so, work toward reducing violence.

For both questions regarding feelings and experience with violence during sex work, there was a high prevalence of missing values. These were notably higher than for other parts of the questionnaire, which could be due to these questions being perceived as particularly sensitive and the students felt intimidated or ashamed to answer the question through an online questionnaire. As a result, there may have been a bias toward individuals with less negative feelings toward their work. Future studies could attempt a more personal interview approach in order to gain a greater understanding of these factors.

Students’ Views Toward Sex Workers and Differences Between Groups

Roberts et al. (2010) reported in their study that the majority of the students (58.5%) are aware of students working in the sex industry. This study found similar results. Over 62% of the non-sex working students reported to be aware of it through the media. Nonetheless, there is still a substantial number of students (22.9%) who reported never having heard about the phenomenon before. Research by Long et al. (2012) showed that people who know someone working in the sex industry have more positive views toward sex workers than others. This study supports these findings. Students who have never been confronted with student sex workers prior to the study reported more often the feeling lack of understanding when thinking of student sex workers than students who were aware of the phenomenon. Moreover, they reported less often the feelings respect and curiosity than students who were aware of students working in the sex industry. These findings point out the importance of increasing the awareness of student sex work. Research shows that there is still limited acceptance of sex work as a profession (Long et al., 2012; Ma et al., 2018). Despite its legalization, many prejudices exist concerning sex work (Sagar et al., 2015a). In the past, sex workers were often seen as culprits, spreading sexually transmitted diseases (Vanwesenbeeck, 2001). Even until now, sex workers in general are seen as victims, which experience several problems. The fact that the majority of the students answered that they felt compassion and dismay while thinking of student sex workers emphasizes this observation. Regarding happiness, however, the current study showed that there was no difference in happiness with respect to working in the sex industry or not.

Limitations

Despite the fact that there was a total of 4386 participants, students who are engaged in the sex industry or who know someone engaged in it may have been more willing to fill in the questionnaire, leading to a sample bias. The study was conducted in a metropolitan city, which might have led to a distorted higher number of sex workers, even though other studies found similar prevalence. On the other hand, it is conceivable that there is a substantial number of unreported cases of sex working students who did not want to provide such intimate information in an online questionnaire, even though it was clearly stated that data were collected anonymously. Further, the study did not include a response option for transgender and non-binary identity, which would be important to include in future studies as such individuals make up a notable percentage of sex workers (Fitzgerald et al., 2015).

A self-report instrument was used to collect the data. Participants might not always tell the truth, particularly concerning a sensitive topic like this. In addition to quantitative research methods, other studies adopted qualitative methods such as interviews (Jenkins, 2006; Sagar et al., 2015a). Qualitative research methods might raise the expressiveness of the answers; at the same time, it might be more accessible for participants to answer questions on this topic in privacy.

The questionnaire used for this analysis was not validated. This is partly due to the fact that there is a lack of validated instruments for the study of sex work and in particular of sex work stigma, which should be dealt with in further research.

The question on “feelings after the intercourse” was displayed rather broadly in the questionnaire (e.g., lacking a comparison to either not having intercourse with a client or not having intercourse at all) and thus may have been more open to interpretation from the respondents. Therefore, the answers given on this question have to be interpreted with caution.

In this work, we derived the parameter of stigmatization mainly from the question about the feelings of non-sex working students toward sex workers, as we believe stigma (only partially dependent on the degree of perception of sex workers themselves) is mainly formed this way (Jonsson and Jakobsson, 2017). We asked the question of conceivable negative experiences to both sex workers and non-sex workers at the same time, which provides a certain comparison (presented in Table 3). However, this question involved various kinds of negative experiences, some of which only serve as a vague estimation for experiencing stigma (e.g., social isolation).

Lastly, the study at hand contains a relatively high number of missing data. As the aim of the research was to get an extensive insight into students working in the sex industry through consulting as many individuals as possible, all given answers from incomplete questionnaires were included. Also, the missing data might reflect the sensitivity of the topic and the results of the study should not be generalized. As mentioned above, in the future, the use of qualitative in addition to quantitative methods could be considered to gain a better understanding on some of the more sensitive topics surrounding student sex work.