Sanders investigates the occupational culture of the off-street sex
industry in Britain. She identifies the risks experienced by women working in
saunas, in brothels, as escorts, and via the Internet and evaluates the
rationality of worker responses to these occupational hazards. She also
describes some of the complex psychological and emotional teThis is a richly detailed account of the way the sex industry works, and
one of the few empirical studies that investigates the off street industry in
Britain. The book seeks to advance a greater knowledge of the social
organisation of the sex industry by uncovering the day to day activities of
women involved in the indoor markets. What types of occupational risks do women
experience in work of this kind? How do these hazards affect their personal
lives? A key concern throughout the book is to assess whether women are passive
victims of the circumstances of prostitution or whether they understand and
calculate their responses to danger. Drawing upon both sociological and
criminological theories, and on detailed research in the city of Birmingham,
the author addresses these questions by estimating the rationality of those
responses and by providing a measure of how women make sense of different
risks.; Sex Work: a risky business describes how women create complex psychological
and emotional techniques to maintain their sanity while selling sex, and goes
on to argue that the indoor sex markets in Britain have a distinct
'occupational culture' with a set of social norms, code of conduct and moral
hierarchies that make it a high regulated workplace despite its illicit and
sometimes illegal nature.
