Sex and The City

Today’s Kompas (Sunday, 20 April 2008) wrote a feature on Dolly, Surabaya’s prostitution complex. Sex and the city in this case is not a TV drama series, it’s a bitter fact and paradox. Sex for sale is definitely not a merit good, that’s why Dolly is literally never legalized, but it has been there for decades. Dealing with the issue, do we need public policy or leave it to the sex market?

Any related findings clearly suggest that issue of (women) prostitution contains problem of moral hazard (i.e. abuse imposed on prostitutes by other parties, most notably seen is their clients). The concept of moral hazard applies to this case generally to problems of a client who performs bad and dangerous behaviors toward a prostitute when her pimp-who is supposed to be a prostitute’s protector-cannot monitor client’ behavior and a prostitute herself can not do much things to prevent and/or to protect herself. The concept of uncertainty (i.e. incomplete insurance on prostitutes’ vulnerability to various kinds of risk) generally applies to a problem of a prostitute cannot select the least risky client and pimp.

Also, it suggests asymmetric information (i.e. a prostitute does not know whether her client is free from venereal diseases or HIV/AIDS and vice versa, most prostitutes do not know about reproduction health, Authority’s lax data and information on prostitutes), asymmetric market power (i.e. a prostitute, as ‘the sex seller’, is on far less bargaining power than her client, as ‘the sex buyer’. It applies when the client refuses to use condom. In another form, a prostitute, as ‘the protection buyer’, is much less powerful than her pimp, as ‘the protection seller’), and negative externality (i.e. one may argue that the existence of prostitution incurs some social costs).

When we are aware of limitation of the competitive (market) framework, problem of endogenous preference and legitimacy of preferences also occur in prostitution issue. The endogenous preferences applies in terms of it is difficult to suggest that to be a prostitute is rational choice of any woman. At the first place, it is much likely that a female prefer not to be a prostitute over to be. Yet, preference may also change as a result of consumption of ‘addictive goods’ (i.e. for instances, early sex experience, glamour lifestyle, overload information on well-being people, and drugs). Repeated use of sexual activity and consumption of utility she gets from it (i.e. money) may produce emotionally dependencies that increase the relative importance of this good in a female’s utility function. The legitimacy preference is subject to such a question whether public restriction or private suasions is more appropriate in judging rationales presented for mitigation on prostitution. This problem has something to do with severe debate between the moralist and the activists towards the issue of prostitution. The moralists often suggest that what prostitutes need is more intensive religious education and even hard punishment to make them quit from prostitution. The activists suggest that the most urgent things to be done are how to reduce prostitutes’ vulnerability, to educate them about how huge the risks are they will face if they keep doing prostitution, and to mitigate causing factors.

However, issue of prostitution is clearly not yet on the government policy agenda. I suggest that it is because policy elites may presume such an issue as politics-as-usual. Thus, because the government views such an issue as an issue with low political and economic stakes and little sense of urgency, one may expect that decision making upon this issue, if any, would be only incremental changes from the status quo. It is incremental in the sense that middle and lower level officials that involved are highly dependent on high level support for action and most concern on budget.

In addition to that, it has been recognized that government intervention on such an issue contains problem of ineffectiveness and inefficiency. These problems may waste such a limited resource even more, which in turn can discourage government’s attempt to put issue of prostitution in their agenda basket. The possible factors cause the government inefficiency and effectiveness are: 1). Clearly, the government experiences insufficient data and studies; 2). The government programs are often fund-driven instead of clear goal-driven. The most pronounced example is it was initially no program in state budget 1999/2000 for street children. However, international development agencies (i.e. World Bank, UNDP, and ADB) offered Rp.66 billion of fund for street children, the government suddenly put program for street children in the state budget. For sure, such a program was not well designed and devised because the main motive of the government was just how to disburse the fund quickly; and 3). The government often chose to work only with NGOs that are already on the government’s list without further scrutiny whether these NGOs really have access to the grass root level or these NGOs have been working in sustainable manner in particular issue, taking into account that many NGOs that only work if funding from government is available and/or only work in ad hoc project basis rather than sustainable program basis.

Taking all these considerations, partnership with NGOs and scale of priorities may have a merit. Any policy or action plan shall integrate the attempts on curbing supply side and pressing demand side simultaneously. Otherwise, we will be still hearing this on Dolly or other Indonesia’s city streets: “Sex…Sex…Sex, anyone?” (like street vendors used to shout: “Cang…Kaca..aang”) or in Kompas’ interesting title: “Bos, Mampir Bos!”.