This Wednesday, the Ministry of Equality made public the study on trafficking, sexual exploitation and prostitution, of which the Council of Ministers has already presented certain results and which aims to make a first statistical approximation of the extent of these phenomena in Spain. The research, based on analysis of web advertisements, estimates that 114,576 women are “in prostitution” and advertise in this way. And among them, 27,557, or 24.2%, are “threatened” with trafficking or sexual exploitation.
This latest figure contrasts with that proposed last September by the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, who presented an overview of the results indicating that there were 94,496 women at risk (80%). However, the ministry explains that the reference data are those currently provided, although both are present in the study. The change is due to the fact that, to calculate it, advertisements are analyzed according to different variables which, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), can be indicative of a risk: the near 95,000 women only meet one. of them, while the more than 27,000 have at least three associates, which is considered more rigorous, reports Igualdad.
The macro-study, prepared by the company Index Geodata in collaboration with the Government Delegation against Gender Violence, responds to “the desire to improve knowledge” of a reality that delegate Carmen Martínez Perza defines as “a space of ‘shadows’ of that ‘its true dimension is unknown. “It’s a first approach, a starting point,” he says. At the time, Redondo said the data would be used to articulate public policies “that allow progress in the abolition of prostitution.”
The investigation analyzed ads published on prostitution sites – only those offering in-person services – using Big Data techniques: after automatically extracting “more than 650,000 pieces of data”, a filtering process was carried out to eliminate “false, misleading or irrelevant”. resulted in 204,433 ads. After removing duplicates to ensure that each woman only appeared once, the figure of 114,576 women with active listings as of November 2023 was obtained.
Balearic Islands, the community with the highest rate
Among them, 28.22% declare in advertisements that they are Colombian, the most present nationality, followed by Spaniards (13.47%). By age, the highest rate is represented by the group between 18 and 24 years old, but Equality recognizes that this is a distribution which may not correspond to reality because advertisements may announce an age which does not correspond to reality. is not real. By community, the one with the highest rate is the Balearic Islands, followed by Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Cantabria. Lleida is the province with the most women who practice prostitution, according to estimates.
Equality is aware of the limitations of the data, as there are more women in prostitution than are advertised on websites. The study therefore goes further and estimates how many women may have been excluded. Using “statistical methods” – the truncated Poisson method to estimate so-called hidden populations – the research reveals that in Spain “there could be approximately” 169,712 women practicing prostitution in November 2023, a figure that the ministry request to be taken into account. with caution and for which he proposes a confidence interval of between 152,735 and 184,234 women.
Concerning the estimation of women at risk of being sexually exploited, the study uses to evaluate six variables which, it specifies, are included by the OSCE as risk factors: “novelty, availability, personality traits, exoticism, services and photography.” If at least three of them are recognized in the advertisements analyzed, it is estimated that this woman could be at risk of trafficking or sexual exploitation.
As the study reveals, for each of the variables, more or less common words were associated in the advertisements: for example, to determine if there is “novelty”, we evaluate whether terms such as “new », “beginner”, ““first time” appear in the city” or “newcomer”, among others. Or “24 hours a day”, “whenever you want” or “24 hours a day, 7 days a week” in case of “availability”.
Critics of researchers
The use of these criteria has been one of the issues criticized in recent weeks by some organizations since the first preview of the results was made public on September 17. Thus, the Feminist Voices for Rights network, made up of academics and researchers from around twenty Spanish universities, regrets that “surprisingly, United Nations indicators are not used” to detect human trafficking, but rather factors which, according to them, “are not very rigorous”. »: “Many are unreliable because they are in a marketing context and can therefore be used as a statement and often they are not even written by the person being advertised. »
The researchers focused on the variable “exoticism” – to which research has assigned terms such as “mulatto” or “exotic beauty” – whose choice “is embarrassing because of the serious methodological negligence and because it makes visible racism.” From Equality, they emphasize that this is what is called “ethnosexualization”, that is to say the use of “origins, nationalities and phenotypic traits considered exotic under the original stereotypes” and that the study analyzes what is contained in the advertisements, many of which sometimes use stereotypical language.
Furthermore, the network believes that the macro-study “lacks scientific rigor” in the analysis of web advertisements which, according to it, “are not representative of the activity of the sexual industry” because “they adapt often to the needs of those who offer sexual services. The researchers believe that “the phenomenon of prostitution, trafficking and sexual exploitation cannot be mapped” “exclusively using this methodology” and regret that the ministry “did not turn to specialized networks , collaborating entities or organized sex workers” with the aim of “helping provide more rigorous data”, they conclude.
Equality’s investigation, however, refers to the fact that, according to the OSCE, “there is strong evidence that advertising websites are one of the main places where traffickers advertise their victims, and that it ‘is precisely for this reason.’ It is necessary for people who work in the fight against trafficking to analyze them so that they can determine which advertisements are suspicious and which are not.
