Gunilla Ekberg and Trisha Baptie: Prostitution and Women's Equality: Imagining More for Women, Parts 1 and 2

Prostitution and Women's Equality: Imagining More for Women, Part 1
by Gunilla Ekberg
Needs No Introduction (Vancouver Public Library: Canada)

This episode of Needs No Introduction is the first in a three-part series on prostitution and features a talk by Gunilla Ekberg. In the midst of heated debate around prostitution laws in Canada, this talk, entitled "Prostitution and Women's Equality: Imagining More for Women," was organized in an effort to debunk myths about the legalization of prostitution and explore alternatives. Gunilla Ekberg is a radical feminist, a lawyer and a human-rights consultant. She has spent much of her life fighting against prostitution, and and worked for 6 years as Special Advisor to the Swedish government on human trafficking. Ekberg advocates for what is referred to as the Nordic model (sometimes also known as the Swedish model), a unique approach to prostitution which includes de-criminalizing sex-workers, criminalizing their pimps and buyers, and funding strategies for workers trying to leave the industry.

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Prostitution and Women's Equality: Imagining More for Women, Part 2
By Trisha Baptie
Needs No Introduction (Vancouver Public Library: Canada)

EVE (formerly Exploited Voices now Educating) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization composed of former sex-industry women dedicated to naming prostitution "violence against women" and seeing its abolition through political action, advocacy and awareness-raising that focuses on ending the demand for paid sexual access to women and children's bodies. EVE operates under a sex-positive feminist model, acknowledging that prostitution is born out of sexism, classism, racism, poverty and other forms of systemic oppression. They invite women with personal experience in the sex industry or with sex-trafficking to connect with them.

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More Resources:

This is a part of larger debate at Rabble (Canada) on prostitution and whether it should be legal/illegal and/or what form either of those stances would take. Go to their ongoing archive on the subject of Prostitution