Introduction

Before the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) in 2003, the provision of sexual services in New Zealand was effectively illegal and sex workers lived with high levels of risk and fear. The consequences of being charged with soliciting were severe and the implications of having a prostitution-related conviction lasted for life. Their essentially illegal status rendered sex workers vulnerable to abuse, violence and exploitation, and highlighted the double standard of morality that penalised them while protecting the rights and identities of their clients.

This chapter will outline significant features in the history of prostitution in New Zealand, focusing in particular on the social and legal context in the years leading up to the passing of the PRA. It will draw on existing research documenting both the social stigma associated with prostitution as well as the legal sanctions against sex workers. Particular effort will be given to including accounts and quotations from sex workers themselves, some of which will draw on the author's own previously published interviews from the 1990s. This emphasis is important in order to ensure as much as possible that sex workers’ own voices inform accounts of the history of their experiences of working in the sex industry.

The primary aim of this chapter is to present a contextual framework for the chapters that follow by providing a window into how sex workers’ lives were negatively impacted upon, and their safety compromised, by the legal environment pre-decriminalisation. It begins with a brief overview of the early history of prostitution in New Zealand and developments leading up to the 1970s, before focusing more specifically on the Massage Parlours Act and the experiences of sex workers in the years leading up to the passage of the PRA. Included in the discussion are the voices of sex workers themselves commenting on their experiences of living under a legislative regime that, while not outlawing prostitution itself, nevertheless made it impossible to work within the sex industry without breaking the law. The chapter argues for the necessity of law reform based on the need to eliminate the double standard of morality that prevailed, which privileged men's access to sex workers while leaving the women facing multiple risks and exploitation.