Ethics Untangled
Ethics Untangled is a series of conversations about the ethical issues that affect all of us, with academics who have spent some time thinking about them. It is brought to you by the IDEA Centre, a specialist unit for teaching, research, training and consultancy in Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds.
Find out more about IDEA, including our Masters programmes in Healthcare Ethics and Applied and Professional Ethics, our PhDs and our consultancy services, here:
ahc.leeds.ac.uk/ethics
Ethics Untangled is edited by Mark Smith at Leeds Media Services.
Music is by Kate Wood.
Ethics Untangled
31. Why is Sex Work So Gendered? With Natasha McKeever
*CONTENT WARNING: This podcast contains some frank discussion of sex and sex work.*
While there are all kinds of sex work, by far the most common scenario involves a man paying a woman for sex. It is, in other words, a highly gendered activity. Why? It turns out the answer to this question isn't as obvious as it might at first seem. It turns out, in fact, that there are multiple possible explanations, some of which fit better with the evidence than others. Natasha McKeever has been examining this evidence and trying to come up with a definitive answer, to an explanatory question which also intersects with some ethical questions. For example, would the world be a better place if sex work was less gendered, or if it didn’t exist at all?
Natasha's paper on this topic has been published (open access) here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/is-sex-work-inherently-gendered/3EE28F1EAC9594C89B21F8E47C42D106
Here's some further reading suggested by Natasha:
Kingston, Sarah, Natalie Hammond, and Scarlett Redman. 2020. Women Who Buy Sex: Converging Sexualities? London: Routledge.
Moen OM ‘Is prostitution harmful?’ Journal of Medical Ethics 2014;40:73-81.
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
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