Abstract:
With the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act in June 2003, the government of Aotearoa/New Zealand decriminalised the selling of sex, redefining prostitution as 'the provision of commercial sexual services' and firmly ensconcing in New Zealand law the idea of prostitution as work. This thesis analyses discourses constituting prostitution in Aotearoa/New Zealand by examining local research into prostitution, print media coverage in the main metropolitan newspapers from 1987 to June 2003 and submissions to the proposed Prostitution Reform Bill between 2000 and 2002.
What these sources suggest is that nationalist discourses which construct Aotearoa/New Zealand as egalitarian and socially harmonious are important in the constitution of prostitution in the local context. Additionally, the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, an organisation formed in 1987 which is uncontested in representing the views of those involved in prostitution here, has been heavily influential in constituting prostitution as 'sex work.' However, although prostitution in Aotearoa/New Zealand is constituted as unusually egalitarian in world terms, it is also not quite work like any other. In fact, the central argument of this thesis is that prostitution in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the period of time leading up to the Prostitution Reform Act came to be constituted as 'sexually exploitative work' in which those involved had chosen to participate from a limited range of choices. Alternative discourses constituting prostitution in competing ways have to a large extent been 'closed off' by the effectiveness of this discourse in the local context. Thus prostitution as 'sexually exploitative work' has become the dominant discourse, perhaps even a 'regime of truth' in Aotearoa/New Zealand at this time. The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 itself both helped to constitute and came about as a result of the shift to prostitution as 'sexually exploitative work.'
