Stigma worst barrier for sex workers leaving the industry, finds study
VANCOUVER — When Cheryl’s manager discovered the 38-year-old used to work in the sex trade, she says he joked that a name plate on her desk read “pubic relations.”
Kayla, 61, was in a new job too when she says a police officer informed a colleague she had formerly been a ”prostitute and a junkie.” She lost the job and saw no option but returning to the sex industry.
Both women encountered the degrading treatment when they attempted to leave sex work for new occupations, an obstacle that a recently published study calls the “whore stigma.” The women were among 22 Vancouver sex workers interviewed for a peer-reviewed article in the Canadian Review of Sociology.
The women, whose names were changed in the study to protect their identities, reported challenges from name calling to violence, identifying the stigma they faced as the most challenging barrier to leaving the sex trade, said researcher Raven Bowen, who studied criminology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.