Introduction

In the UK and around the globe, victims/survivors of sexual exploitation are disproportionately girls, and those who abuse and exploit them are mostly men and boys. Yet in much policy and public discussion, sexual exploitation is often framed as an issue involving ‘children’, without attention to the asymmetry between experiences of young women and young men. This does not negate that some boys can be victims, some girls can be perpetrators and either could be victim and perpetrator of sexual exploitation at the same time. What the asymmetric pattern does underscore is that responses to sexual exploitation would benefit from understanding how gender is relevant to victimisation and perpetration. The chapter sets out that gender is critical to talking and theorising about sexual exploitation in two main ways: in understanding patterns of perpetration and victimisation, and in how policy and practice responds to young people. I draw on bell hooks (2000) to suggest that sexual exploitation can be conceptualised as a form of patriarchal violence, an approach reflecting decades of feminist analysis that links sexual abuse and exploitation to patriarchal power. Throughout the chapter, implications for practice are highlighted and are then reiterated in a concluding section.

Defining sexual exploitation

Policy and practice definitions of sexual exploitation across regions of the UK have evolved rapidly over the last two decades (Pearce 2009; Beckett et al 2017). The current government definition for England, introduced in 2017, names sexual exploitation of children under 18 as a form of child sexual abuse, with distinct features involving a) exchange and b) some form of gain for the perpetrator (Department for Education 2017). This represents a catchup with pioneering feminist analyses that identified sexual exploitation as part of a continuum of child sexual abuse, with ‘additional dynamics and realities’ (Kelly and Regan 2000:15). Yet the inclusion of ‘exchange’ has more recently been criticised because sexual abuse can also involve ‘exchange’ (Kelly and Karsna 2017). As they and Lovett, Coy and Kelly (2018) note, grooming of children in all forms and contexts of child sexual abuse and exploitation can involve attention, affection and gifts, and some reports into sexual exploitation have found little evidence of ‘reward’.