Cold-yeah I have seen that before
It appears then that the numbers produced by CATWA from Newspaper reports are almost certainly a very large exaggeration of the actual case-but that suits the political agenda of CATWA (which is to claim that legalization/decriminalization leads to an expansion of the illegal industry).
Numeracy is not CATWA’s strong point-or to be fair-it is not the strong point of the Newspapers which seem to comprise much of their “research”. For instance Mary Sullivan in Making Sex Work (2007) says p138”Recent research into Australia’s sexual behaviour found that one in six men had paid for sex, while for women the figure is negligible.
Under Victoria’s legalized prostitution regime there are approximately 3.1 million purchases of ‘sexual services’ per year-that is in an adult male population of 1.8 million. This means that in Victoria that have used women in prostitution could be as high as 1.7 sexual services per adult male each year”.^ (she cites three sources IBIS World Business Information Pty Ltd Personal Services n.e.c in Australia reports(1998-October2005) , Sexual Services in Australia (May 2006) and Parliamentary debate (assembly) of 25th May 1999 (1191-1211).)
Well let’s look at the sources; in the assembly debate 25th May 1999 there is a mention of the 60,000 figure made by Mr Hulls (Niddrie) p1194 “It is estimated (emphasis added) that 60 000 Victorian men visit brothels every week. I notice that the honourable member sitting up the back who shall remain nameless seems somewhat surprised by that number. ……It is interesting to note that some 60 000 Victorian men visit brothels every week and the industry turnover is $360 million a year. It is a substantial industry.” Then on p1201 we have Mr Haermeyer (Yan Yean) “As the honourable member for Niddrie pointed out, each week some 60 000 men visit brothels” Then on again p1205 we have in a speech by Mr Savage (Mildura) “…Each week about 60 000 Victorian men spend up to $7 million on prostitutes, with the largely legalised industry turning over about $360 million a year”. So no clue there as to source of these estimates-except that it is an estimate and before May 25th 1999-it’s pretty obvious these in turn are quotes from The Age (see below). One has to remember that debates do not represent a contribution to the evidence but represent the opinion of the speaker, which is often (and depressingly) no better informed than anyone else.
The same figures have been bandied about before, so in 2002 we find (Sullivan and Jeffreys 2002 Legalization the Australian experience Violence Against Women 2002 8: 1140) say on p1142 “Each week, 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalized industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4,500 workers”(citing Curbing crime in the sex industry (Editorial). (1999, May 7). The Age, p. A18) and again Sullivan and Jeffreys (undated) Legalizing prostitution is not the answer: the example of Victoria Australia CATWA (www.catwinternational.org/Content/Images/Article/95/attachment.pdf)
P3 “Each week 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalised industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4500 prostituted women and girls (The Age, 28 Feb, 1999). When one considers that Victoria’s population is around 3.5 million people, these figures attest to how mainstream buying the right to sexually abuse a woman has become in the state.”
So it looks like here is an example of circular citation (sometimes cycled through Parliament in an attempt to give the citation added authenticity) and that the original source of these figures is an article in The Age from February 28th 1999. The figures are obvious guestimates-if there were 60,000 men visiting prostitutes per week then a spend of $7M per week would imply $116 per visit-which is plausible for an hour for a brothel prostitute back in 1999. And $7M per week is indeed about $360M per year and 60,000 per week would amount to approximately 3.1 million purchases of ‘sexual services’ per year. Where does the 4500 estimate for those in legal brothels come from? According to Mary Sullivan (Sullivan 2007 op cit p139 ) it seems to come from “Forbes’ more recent research found that by the end of the decade the figure had risen to near 4,500” (citing The Age December1st 1999). We have no idea how the “research” that lay behind this estimate was conducted.
So how have the numbers cited with such certainty been arrived at if it was not a proper survey? It is pretty obvious they are back of the envelope calculations, taking 4500 legal brothel sex workers (itself an estimate-probably a guestimate)-guessing the number of clients each might see a week (12-15) to arrive at 60,000 and multiplying by the average brothel fee-et voila.
However is the 60,000 plausible? The population of Victoria was in fact 4.7M in 1998 (www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/CA25687100069892CA2568880028A236/$File/32352_30%20June%201998.pdf)The number of males aged between 20 and 70 is 1.48M so 60,000 is 4% of Victorian men using sexual services every week, if it is really true that one sixth (16%) of Australians has ever paid for sex that would imply men who had ever paid for sex use prostitutes do so about once a month-which seems improbable-so that should have given a numerate person pause for thought- that the numbers cannot be simultaneously true. (Indeed the source of the 16% had ever paid for sex also states that 1.9% had paid for sex in the past year Rissel, CE, et al 'Sex in Australia: Experiences of commercial sex in a representative sample of adults' in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 27(2):191-197 at p191)
The error is of course that the 4500 (even were that estimate true) are not all active every week and some only work occasionally when they need money or they need to supplement other income. (This number was probably arrived at by multiplying a guess of the number of brothels by a guess of the number of workers they employ-the error is that some women work at multiple brothels leading to double counting and an overestimate in the total).
This illustrates the problems of using calculative methods to estimate population size of sex workers or clients. (for a discussion see Willcox A et al 2009 Tackling the demand for prostitution: a rapid evidence assessment of the published research literature Research report 37 The Home office (UK) webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/horr27c.pdf pgs2-4 where they note(p4) “estimates of the proportion of UK males who buy sex and the estimated average frequency of visits to prostitutes vary widely. The great disparity between estimates of previous prostitute use is likely to stem from the stigmatised nature of the behaviour, and the different methodologies employed in measuring it. Survey approaches generally produce markedly lower estimates of client numbers than calculations derived from the supply side. While surveys are prone to under-reporting, and perhaps also over-reporting, calculative estimates from the supply side rely on successive and compounding calculations, and hence more assumptions.”)
So in short-the numbers quoted by for the expansion or the size of the prostitution industry by CATWA are based on nothing more than newspaper reports, speculation and wishful thinking and are simply cannot be taken as reliable.