In just five years Sweden has dramatically reduced the number of its women in prostitution. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared.
Gone too, for the most part, are the renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal. In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex is nil. By what complex formula has Sweden managed this feat?
It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem… gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.
In , after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that criminalizes the buying of sex, and decriminalizes the selling of sex. Police made very few arrests of johns and prostitution in Sweden, which had previously been legalized, went on pretty much as it had gone on before.
Prostitution always has been, and it always will be. But eminently secure in the thinking behind their plan, the Swedes paid no heed.
