Understanding the Structural Oppression of Sex Workers: Toward Informing Social Work from an Irish Standpoint

The purpose of this paper is to examine sex work and social work from an Irish standpoint in concurrence with the neo-abolitionist radical feminist position. Data collection consisted of interviews with 15 women currently engaged in sex work in the Republic of Ireland. Presenting the voices and experiences of women, we argue that social workers need to better understand the oppression of sex workers, as demonstrated through participants’ accounts. Through a feminist standpoint epistemology, in keeping with an interpretivist/feminist qualitative framework, we critically explore social work, surveillance and legislation operating within gendered structural inequalities embedded in society. Social workers may then reduce the way that they reinforce this oppression through occupying oppressive systems of law, policy and practice. Themes emerging from the data are (1) Reasons for entering sex work (2), Fear of disclosing sex work to professionals, and (3) Barriers impeding access to support services. We consider findings with respect to the research question: what lessons for the social work profession can be taken from Irish sex workers’ experiences? We acknowledge how current legislative processes still set out expectations for women in society which resonate with its patriarchal past. We conclude that social work can contribute to legal reform, practice and policy change within broader social change campaigns.