Comprehensive Social, Healthcare and Human Interventions in Curbing Prostitution

In this chapter, the author addresses how Thailand, in recent decades, has been actively alleviating the root causes of prostitution in order to disincentivise disadvantaged women and girls from entering the sex industry. First, the author unveils Thailand’s policy development on the delivery of social protection schemes for underprivileged populations. Here a range of financial and non-financial social protection benefits have been allocated to those of impoverished origins, in order to help them satisfy their subsistence needs. Second, the author presents Thailand’s healthcare interventions in prostitution in recent decades. Here the author problematises how public healthcare services have been insufficient over the past decades. Even if prostitutes can gain access to public healthcare services, they are often reluctant to receive such benefits due to self-perceived or actual occupational stigmatisation that they regularly encounter in public hospitals. The author argues why it is important for Thailand to positively advertise, and hold more public education events to socialise the importance of, occupational and sexual health inclusivity within the country. Without alleviating the stigmatisation sex workers are bound by, prostitutes remain unwilling to seek medical support, including, but not limited to, sexual health screening, testing and prevention. Third, the author presents the Government’s policy development on human investment. Here the author particularly highlights how more on-the-job and vocational training opportunities have been distributed to disadvantaged sex workers, allowing them to be upskilled and reskilled for the purpose of securing jobs in the conventional labour market by leaving the sex industry. However, the author reveals how, to date, the outcomes of human investment interventions are dissatisfactory, in part owing to the fact that former prostitutes receive occupational stigmatisation in the conventional labour market given their visible, identifiable “prostitute” traits (such as tattoos). Again, the author reiterates how destigmatisation and inclusion should be prioritised in order to build a more inclusive future for the younger and next generations.