WOMEN WHO BUY SEXUAL SERVICES IN THE UK

This study seeks to find out more about women’s experiences of buying sexual services in the United Kingdom (UK); what they buy, their reasons for buying sex, how they negotiate their physical and sexual safety and how their experiences feed into current policy debates. Previous research has documented how female sex buyers travel to destinations such as the Caribbean and Asia to purchase sex. Yet there is little research on women who buy sex in the UK, despite recent research on male clients.

This study seeks to explore motivations and characteristics of women who purchase sex, who and where they buy sex from and to explore how physical and sexual safety are negotiated. This exploratory study will involve interviewing male and/or female escorts who sell sex to women, as well as interviews with female clients in the UK. Participants will be recruited via online escort agencies, online network sites for clients, local contacts with charities, and support agencies and through the researchers’ previous sex work contacts. The findings will contribute to growing an empirically grounded UK sex work research base and consider the place of female sex buyers in UK policy debates, which have increasingly targeted clients.