To browse Academia. Ronald Weitzer. Alexis Aronowitz. Magaly Rodriguez Garcia. Stef Adriaenssens , Thomas Machiels. This contribution develops an empirically informed measure of output in prostitution in Belgium. Its starting point is to measure income in one locational segment of the prostitution market: window prostitution. Output is decomposed in overall supply of sex workers, average transactions in a given working time, and price per transaction. These factors are estimated for existing red light districts.
Data are based on systematic observations of supply and transactions, and of internet relics on prices. The consolidated measure of heterosexual prostitution makes use of the window prostitution benchmark. This way, the relative size in transactions in other segments such as brothels or escort services are estimated. Principal component analysis indicates that all indicators refer to one latent variable. This multi-item proxy allows for an estimate of transaction shares of segments other than window prostitution.
Combined with prices from internet relics, we measure output of every heterosexual prostitution segment. Finally, non-resident production - production by migrants who reside less than a year in Belgium, that is - is accounted as an import in national accounts.
This paper discusses the genealogy of prostitution policies in Brussels through the lens of morality politics. It uses the analytical framework proposed by Hendrik Wagenaar and Sietske Altink to compare the formulation and implementation of policies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with today's policymaking in Brussels as well as the discourses underlying those policies.
Although it departs from the six characteristics of morality politics, the study introduces one element that adds to the complexity of policymaking in this domain: gender. We argue that a gendered ideology and stigma have informed past and present prostitution policies in Brussels and that the many actors involved in the city's policymaking have more often than not relied on emotions and personal views on female sexuality to support their calls for the control or outright repression of public commercial sex.
