Conflicting Ideas of Justice. An Analysis of the Swedish Prostitution Policy Debate

Abstract: The Swedish prostitution policy that prohibits the purchase of sexual services has been the subject of considerable debate. Internationally, prostitution is predominantly criminalized due to religious reasons. This makes the Swedish policy, motivated by feminist arguments on women’s rights, unique. Recently, a debate has arisen where domestic human rights organizations criticize the policy using arguments on sex workers’ rights. This study primarily aims to analyze inherent ideas of justice in different human rights organizations’ views of prostitution policy. An ideal type analysis uses Marxist and liberal theory of justice to study the opposing positions of RFSL and the Swedish Women’s Lobby. The analysis shows that the Swedish Women’s Lobby pursue arguments about societal consequences of prostitution and aim to end of sexual exploitation of women, which are in line with a Marxist theory of justice. RFSL’s arguments are focused on consequences of policy for individual sex workers and individual autonomy, which correspond to a liberal theory of justice that privileges principles of individual liberty. Secondarily, the study aims to assess the internal and external validity of the two opposing arguments. Both arguments struggle with empirical weaknesses that affect their external and internal validity.