What is the number of prostitutes around the world?

Described as one of the oldest professions in the world, prostitution, with each society having different social beliefs about it. It has an overall population of 42 million around the world currently working as sex workers. That has an appalling eighty percent of women working in the field compared to 20 percent of men working in the field. Prostitution is considered as a very gendered issue as in most cases females are either being coerced or be it with consent to sell their bodies to males. The majority of female prostitutes will experience a mixture of physical abuse and psychological control constructed in a way to dismantle a victim’s defiance and to ensure obedience to her pimp. This is the very exploitive nature that is very prevalent in prostitute culture where females are treated as property by their pimps thus a very gendered issue.

If prostitutes are treated bad then why did the enter in the first place? A question is difficult to pinpoint an exact answer due to their being many and varied reasons as to why someone might join.  The question is entrenched of threat by people ignorantly making assumptions that are either too simplistic, generalized or something that is stereotypical. It is these views that permeate within society with little knowledge what prostitutes actually go through. There is numerous of categories a prostitute may fall into. On one end of the spectrum there are escorts or professional sex workers who can charge a lot of money for their services, and on the others hand, there are, what most people think of prostitutes, streetwalkers who are drug addicts that are in poverty.