Rethinking Sex Work Policy: Case Studies in Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore
In Southeast Asia, sex work is often a financial strategy chosen by women facing limited opportunities, and more efforts are needed to advocate for policies that acknowledge their realities.
by Sean Huy Vu, TAF correspondent for Vietnam
Sex Work in Southeast Asia, such as in Vietnam and Thailand, has long been understood through the framework of human trafficking, but this approach fails to capture the complex reality of the region’s nightlife economy. In narratives that focus on the oppression of women and children, “anecdotes are generalized and presented as conclusive evidence; sampling is selective; and counterevidence is routinely ignored.” Much of the data on sex trafficking, including those by the United States State Department and several NGOs, often fails to specify “how the data was gathered, which sources were consulted, who was allowed to give information, whose estimates were deemed authoritative and how data were confirmed [emphasis in original].” There is no universally agreed upon method of gathering sex trafficking data, and sensational media and inflated numbers of victims only cause confusion and stigmatization towards Southeast Asia’s sex workers.
Alternatively, sex work can be an opportunity for many women that offers them a degree of agency rather than exploitation. For many rural or working-class women across Southeast Asia, participating in adult entertainment in the cities can enable them to provide better financial support for themselves and their families compared to other industries or the social insurance system. In Ho Chi Minh City, many workers reported monthly earnings ranging from US$1,000 to US$4,000, five to ten times higher than the city’s average income. This income allows workers to access a wider range of goods and services than they otherwise could, such as healthcare, education, and reliable utilities. Many workers, particularly unmarried women in their twenties, describe saving strategically for future marriage or investing in small businesses as a pathway to transition into other sectors. Domestic consumption by sex workers and their relatives also contributes to economic growth for the rest of society.
Sex work can also be viewed as a form of resistance against restrictive notions of femininity. In many Southeast Asian societies influenced by orthodox Confucian, Catholic, or Islamic traditions, women are often expected to embody moral virtue through modesty and repression of one’s carnal desires. In practice, these expectations often impose a double standard in which men’s sexual needs are accepted as natural while female desire is disciplined or stigmatized. In this context, adult entertainment industries can offer a space for women to claim ownership over their bodies and express their sexual subjectivity, free from patriarchal constraints and societal judgement.
Contrary to popular perceptions, the sex industry in Southeast Asia can be safer than what is commonly believed, even in the absence of formal legal protections. Several bar hostesses and masseuses interviewed for this analysis reported that most of their clients were respectful and that they had good relationships with their colleagues and managers. Many reported being able to decline customers’ requests for sexual services, especially if they appeared intoxicated, behaved aggressively, or refused to wear condoms. A 2012 International Organization for Migration survey of 398 Vietnamese female sex workers across three major cities found that 4% reported being “tricked/lured” into prostitution, and 1% were “forced” into it. A separate 2007 study in Thailand found that 2% of 815 workers across four cities stated that they were tricked or forced into the industry.
None of this is to deny the persistent problems that plague the industry in Thailand and Vietnam. In 2023, a German national was arrested on suspicion of accepting solicitation from minors working at an erotic bar in Pattaya. The man, however, was released by Thai police after bribing them the equivalent of US$50,000; he was later sentenced to nine months of probation by a Frankfurt court. Between 20–27% of Vietnamese sex workers in one study reported experiencing physical violence, and 35% of them have experienced verbal abuse from their customers. In contrast to their counterparts in the spas and bars, Thai and Vietnamese streetwalkers, call girls, and escorts experience the highest rates of violence by customers and employers in the industry. The illegal status of sex work in Vietnam and Thailand leaves workers and their businesses vulnerable to extortion and arbitrary arrest by police, who extract rent from adult establishments in exchange for allowing them to operate.
Southeast Asia’s sex industry is a spectrum of lived experiences and institutions, and cannot be reduced to the binary of exploitation vs. liberation, oppressor vs. oppressed. Like much of Southeast Asia, the erotic economy operates through a mix of formal laws and informal norms that renders sexual labor very precarious. If sex work was fully legalized in Vietnam and Thailand, as opposed to decriminalized as it is now, workers could have greater legal protections from customers, employers, or police. The price of sex, according to one European brothel manager interviewed, would go down, as the barriers for entering the industry would be lower for women and attract more of them to compete. At the same time, legalization would allow the state to formally tax and regulate erotic commerce, which could reduce workers’ commission, or simply drive them to underreport their earnings, as in Europe.
Singapore offers some suggestions of how decriminalized prostitution can be regulated, but some methods may be overly restrictive. The city-state has a “no-liquor” zone in the Geylang district, with several cameras installed throughout the neighborhood. Only registered brothels are allowed to operate and employ workers from Vietnam, Thailand, China, Malaysia, or Singapore itself. Every worker is interviewed and registered by the police, must be between 21 to 35 years old, and is required to receive regular medical testing for STIs. However, the migrant workers cannot transition to another industry in Singapore, marry a local citizen, or live outside their brothel. They also cannot leave their brothel without their manager’s permission, or be at risk of being fined S$500.
Policymakers, activists, and academics — both in the West and within Southeast Asia’s elites — have dominated the discourse surrounding sex work in the region for several years. In doing so, they have often marginalized the perspectives of sex workers themselves and perpetuated racial and gender stereotypes that portray them as uneducated, infantile, and powerless. Far from being passive victims of patriarchal exploitation or institutional corruption, sex workers in Southeast Asia actively navigate unequal distributions of power and wealth in pursuit of bodily autonomy, social mobility, and financial independence. In order to better safeguard the rights of women in the sex industry, Southeast Asian governments should include workers themselves in the policymaking process to better protect them and respond to their needs.
Edited by Phan Quang Anh Bui, Frontier Analysis Editor
