I've received several emails and fundraising pleas and prayer letter updates over the years that refer to an estimated three million prostitutes in Thailand. For two significant reasons, I plead for anyone involved with these issues to be careful with the use of this dubious, unhelpful statistic.
First of all, it is not helpful to describe someone working in the sex industry as a prostitute, to reduce your description of them to merely this role in life. Though it is common to refer to someone by their job, I don't think we should do so when people are reduced to working in the sex industry. For most women in such work (yes, I know there are men and boys involved, but females make up the vast majority), this is not a profession chosen freely or willingly but one made under force or economic duress or because of a lack of other options. To reduce someone to an epithet is unfair and undemeaning. I think it is more helpful to use a term such as 'sex-worker' and be careful to be as hopeful and visionary and positive as possible when talking about this work. I'm not asking people to be pollyanhish about this. I just think that mature people can treat people caught in difficult circumstances with respect, and the term 'prostitute' to me is inherently degrading and ugly. We can do better.
Secondly, the number three million cannot be accurate. Thailand has approximately 69 million people, about 35 million females. If 95% of the sex workers in Thailand are female, this would mean that of Thailand's 35 million females nearly 2.8 million are sex workers. If you look at Thailand's population distribution, you'll find that there are approximately 17 million Thai females between the ages of 15 and 50, ages which would certainly cover almost all of these sex workers. Do you really believe that one in six Thai women (2.8 million out of 17 million) are sex workers? A ridiculous statistic. Even including 10-14 year-old Thai girls, the number would still be an unrealistic 2.8 million out of 20 million.
Let's take the worst estimates of the infamous Nana Entertainment Plaza in Bangkok, where some people say as many as 10,000 women work in some part of the sex industry. Even if that number were true, and even a greater total of 20,000 worked in the larger Nana area, that would mean that to justify the 3 million number there would be an equivalent of 150 Nana concentrations of sex workers in Thailand. Despite the number of sex-massage parlors and sex-karaoke bars sprinkled around Thailand, that number sounds ridiculous to me.
What are the real numbers? There are certainly in the tens of thousands of Thai women involved in the sex industry in some way. Likely into the low hundreds of thousands? Perhaps even more? I don't know. But a simple crunching of the numbers shows me that the three million number certainly cannot be true, regardless of the worst stereotypes of Thailand. It's important for NGO's and missionaries and people of good will to get their facts as straight as they can. Perhaps I've misstatedsome things in this very article, and if so I am open for correction. It just seems to me that the three million figure is an easy, even lazy, and inaccurate way to sensationalize the problems with the sex industry in Thailand. I know the problem is vast and disturbing. But to best tackle these issues we need integrity and honesty and facts.
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