Contenu du sommaire : Prostitution : marchés, organisation, mobilisations

Confronted with police repression both in 1975 and in 2002, prostitutes tried to rally on both occasions. During their first protest, despite profoundly diverging views on prostitution, they could rely on the active support of abolitionist and feminist activists. Such an alliance could not be renewed 27 years later. The reasons for the withdrawal of previous supporters of the cause of prostitutes lie within the evolutions that took place between 1975 and 2002, whether in the world of prostitution, in medical and social care provided to prostitutes, or in feminist reflection and activism.

Back in the dark years of France, prostitution takes shape in strange ways. If the venal activity does not undergo radical transformations, it remains nevertheless that the conditions created by the Occupation, intensified by a most conservative administration, have altered the decisional sphere and given way to original practices. On the basis of unexploited legal records, this article describes several aspects of prostitutionin France under the Vichy administration, while preserving the point of view of the prostitute and of the exercise of her profession.

This article is at the meeting point of sociology of professions, gender studies and military history. Based on unpublished German and French information, it analyzes the regulation of prostitution by German army forces from 1940 to 1944. On the surface, these measures were taken to counter an eventual epidemic, since the "Wehrmacht" was obsessed with venereal diseases. Actually, the German general staff attempted to prevent first meetings they could not control between their soldiers and French women. The true objective of these measures was to regulate male-female relationships between the occupying forces and the civilian female population, on the basis of power relations and repressive measures against French women. This regulation gave German soldiers the possibility to derive benefits from a victory.

This article relates feminist debates on trafficking in women and prostitution to human rights discourses and policies, to assess proposals to ease women's situations. The question of how prostitution is politically framed can decide and formulate adopted policy strategies, with neighbouring countries taking radically different approaches to legislation. Issues of women's agency, victimisation and resistance are central. Traffic in women by its nature entails situations of violence and social control and complexities between migration, human trafficking and smuggling are apparent*. The brief mapping of trafficking in women in southeast Europe (SEE)** focuses primarily on the impact of militarization on some societies of the former Yugoslavia. Traffic in women in militarised conditions synthesises the use of force and social control of women into prostitution in particular ways. Criminal and human rights legislation sits uneasily with military actions, and UN sanctions, in reinforcing or attempting to combat such human rights abuses. Issues of shaming women and moral judgements against women (socially and intellectually) loom large in much discussion of these issues. Practical changes to legislation with regard to human rights and migration are considered by some feminist analysts to generate workable conditions to combat key aspects of the traffic in women.*See L. D. Long 'Trafficking in Women and Children as a Security Challenge in Southeast Europe' Southeast European and Black Seas Studies Vol. 2, No.2 (May 2002) pp.53-68**The countries of Southeastern Europe (SEE) include: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Kosova, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova and Romania. Greece is part of SEE and the situation there with over 30,000 prostitutes is such that overlapping investigations into traffic in women in the region include situations in Greece ranging from child brides to indentured women workers.

Most feminist studies see prostitution as an explicit expression of masculinity, while neglecting the differences among clients and diverse social meanings that clients seek in prostitution. Based on in-depth interviews with Taiwanese clients and sex workers, this paper will analyze clients' use of prostitutes in terms of gendered sexuality and class. The paper analyze how clients who come from different social classes understand their sexual encounters with prostitutes differently; how they negotiate the contradiction and social morality surrounding prostitution, such as the stigma of punters, fidelity in marriage and objectifying women as sexual commodities. Nonetheless, I contest the ideology of the ‘male sexual urge' which underpins Taiwanese prostitution and argue that some sexual consumption is indeed a well-planned consumption, especially for those respectable middle-class men. Above all, I argue that clients' emotional demands, always presented as ‘not just sex', are highly related to their conception of ‘good sex'.

This article offers an overview of the history of clinical research on prostitution at the university and in various NGOs, with the aim to go beyond its findings. If one can indicate what would characterize the psychic positioning of the prostitute, it is more difficult to describe the mechanisms, between injunction and the building of a fourth character, which take part of the declaration: "I am a prostitute". It would be a mistake to deprive the prostitute of any erotology in the practice od her job. This erotology can be a part of the search for oneself and contribute to an experiment of subjectivation between word and opening of the body. The author focuses on the modern figure of the prostitute built by our times, as well as on what is at stake when an individual is told that (s)he is a "worker of the sex".

This text proposes a comparative analysis of the position of the women and men on the labor market in Brazil during the Nineties. It takes as reference the years which open and close this decade as two significant years for the Brazilian economy, i.e. the years 1993 and 1995. The objective is to give a greater temporal depth to the former analyses while exploring new angles of sight such as the distinction of race/coulor and the level of schooling of women and men, which is determining for the obtention of better jobs or the exercice of recognized professions. This article is based mainly on the data of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE) and of the Ministry of Education (MEC)*.*This data is available on internet. Bruschini, Cristina, Lombardi Maria Rosa, Banco de Dados sobre o Trabalho das Mulheres, Fundação Carlos Chagas, 1998