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Sex Workers or Citizens? Prostitution and the Shaping of “Settler” Society in Australia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

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The history of prostitution, defined as the commercial exchange of sexual services, provides a fertile ground for the study of the intersections between gender, race and class. Obviously, the sale of sexual labour has implications for constructions of gender, although the specific implications may change with time. Commercial sex offers particularly sharp insights into the ways in which gender considerations intersect with class and race because of the physical intimacy and potential for procreation involved in the sex act. Prostitution literally forces societies to come face to face with their assumptions about and attitudes to class and race hierarchies and relationships. The Australian case is especially useful for studying these relationships because of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women which has characterized colonial society generally and certain types of communities in particular, and the ways in which this imbalance affected some classes and ethnic groups more than others. Colonial Australia also provides a complex tapestry of ethnic/racial issues because it included divisions not just between “white” settlers and indigenous Aborigines, but also between both of these groups and various groups of immigrant, “coloured” workers. In the twentieth century, when demographic patterns became more balanced in gender terms and more homogenous in racial terms, the international sex industry continued to be important because it played a part in Australia's quest for recognition as an independent member of the community of “civilized”, white, nations. Finally, the process of reassessing Australia's place in the world was intimately connected to a reassessment of Australia's domestic policies, both in relation to prostitution generally and to the sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 44 , supplement S7: Complicating Categories: Gender, Class, Race and Ethnicity , December 1999 , pp. 101 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1999

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