Working well : women's experience of managing psychological wellbeing as sex workers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Despite evidence to the contrary, policy makers, some researchers and many who provide \nhealth and social services to sex workers continue to reflect and reinforce the notion that sex \nworkers are dysfunctional and constitute a threat to public health. This thesis presents the \nresults of a study which explicitly examined how indoor sex workers look after their \npsychological wellbeing. Twelve participants (who had worked as sex workers for at least 3 \nyears) took part in semi-structured interviews and discussed how they looked after themselves \nboth at work and in their wider social context. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using \ninterpretative phenomenological analysis. Two main themes emerged from the data. The first, \n“doing sex work”, relates to workplace practices. The second theme, “being a sex worker”, \nrelates to how the women understand their experience of being a sex worker in their social \ncontext and how they care for themselves in this arena; also apparent in this theme are aspects \nrelated to entry and exit of the industry. All participants took part in the study to increase \nunderstanding of and social justice for sex workers. Most of the participants see sex work as \nhaving a positive contribution to their personal growth. The findings show that participants are \nresilient and employ self-care practices that are commonly used by many in occupations that \ndeal with people or who are stigmatised in some way. Major conclusions drawn from the study \nare that working in a supportive environment, prior understandings of sex work, personal traits \nand reasons for entering the sex industry are closely related to positive psychological \nwellbeing.
Author: Janet Marie
Language: English
Topic: Sex work and related issues
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W10656591