I am looking for female indoor, independent sex workers in the North of England to take part in this PhD research.

The research is about how you manage your time at work. It is usually an allotted time that is sold and yet the focus is always on the services offered during that exchange. I am hoping this research shifts this towards an understanding of how sex workers manage their time. I have already started interviewing and participants have shared how they manage the allotted time without visibly clock-watching, for example. Its methods such as these that I am interested in.

I would like to meet research participants 3 times over a period of 10-12 months to discuss the issues above.  Each meeting will take between 1-2 hours.  During these meetings, participants will be asked to draw, write and talk about experiences of their finances, client requests, how they advertise and the time they spend at work. Having said this, the method of research is flexible and I can do whatever you feel most comfortable with. Timings are also flexible.

For more information about the aims of the research, the questions I will ask and the interview method please feel free to click on one of the links I have provided below.

Participants are offered compensation for their time in the form of gift vouchers as a way of saying thank you for their involvement. For the first and second meetings you will be given ?20 on each occasion and on the third meeting you will be given ?50. You can choose where these gift vouchers are for. I am very aware that this is far below your usual hourly rates and this will put many off taking part. If this is the case please do get in touch because all feedback is appreciated.

This study has been reviewed by the University of Leeds Research Ethics Committee and granted full ethical approval.  It is being supervised by Teela Sanders in the School of Sociology and Social Policy.

In line with my ethical approval any contact with participants, potential participants or inquirers will be strictly confidential. All research data following interview will be anonymised and not publicised in a way which identifies participants. You can choose to use an alias throughout the research process and I do not ask for any personal identity information.

Email: l.jarvis@leeds.ac.uk
Twitter: @laura_jarvis
Blog: sexworktimeresearch.wordpress.com
University Staff Webpage: sociology.leeds.ac.uk/people/teaching-assistants/laura-jarvis-king




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Hi, no problem...
 
I think it's important to start studying sex work in the same way we research other forms of work. The use of time at work is one way of looking at any changes in the way workers organise their work or feel about their work. I am particularly looking at how the financial crisis and following austerity has led to changes in our working times. And this will form part of a larger understanding of how the current economic climate has affected work.

By researching sex work like other work rather than focusing on traditional questions about why people sex work or thinking of it as merely a lifestyle rather than a work choice, I hope to contribute to arguments that it should be recognised as work and decriminalised.

The research was also developed with a sex work support project and they suggested that looking into the effects of recession and the economy would be useful following on from changing needs of their service users.

I am researching with sex workers rather than clients for this piece of research. This is because it is mostly the sex worker who controls her own time as well as managing the time during each client appointment. Originally I wanted to interview both sex workers and another group of clients to see how each tried to use the time in the appointment given their changing finances but my supervisor suggested doing this as two separate research projects to make it more manageable. I hope to then interview clients of sex workers in a future research project if possible.

I hope this makes more sense but I'm happy to give more information or answer any questions.

Thanks,
Laura

Thank you for your explanation.

I definitely don't view sex work as a 'lifestyle' choice hahaha! Maybe a more flexible way to make more money or, rather, to make enough money to survive in culture whereby everything is closing in? But a 'lifestyle choice'...no .

To be honest though, it is a good research idea as I bet you will find you can bust the myth that sex workers just work for the time they are with a client...as in my experience you spend as much time or longer sorting out appts, getting ready, getting over appts (!)...getting over illnesses acquired by the nature of the job etc etc etc.

It is an interesting slant and I guess such awareness raising would be a positive thing.