Ireland has been considering the Nordic model as well, and this week Canada is holding hearings into whether it should jump on the Swedish ship.īut not everyone - not even every Swedish feminist - agrees the Nordic model is the answer. A French Senate committee this week is considering a bill based on Sweden's law, after the lower house approved it in December.

The European Parliament - where just four years ago 'people were actually laughing about the Swedish legislation,' said Persson - endorsed the model in February. But this year, the approach now known as the 'Nordic model' has seen its influence skyrocket. The 15-year-old law has been copied in Norway and Iceland Finland and the United Kingdom have adopted a modified version. Supporters of the law say it has reduced street prostitution, helped curb sex trafficking, and shifted the social shame that has always stigmatized transactional sex away from women and on to men. Persson believes this arrangement protects women, challenges gender stereotypes, and puts society on a path toward reducing violence against women. 'I can see that in the eyes of people when you talk about it.' 'This is really difficult for people around the world to understand,' said Olga Persson, the secretary general of the Swedish Association of Women's Shelters and Young Women's Empowerment Centers. It's only illegal for a man - and it's almost always a man - to pay for it. Women (or men, for that matter) can sell all the sex they want. In the fight to stamp out transactional sex, the Swedes have flipped the prostitution paradigm on its head. In Sweden, all that chatting could make the young man a criminal. When they run into a young man, they light cigarettes and chat him up. There, two middle-aged women with short skirts, long blonde hair, and light puffer jackets emerge and stroll slowly toward the water. The nearly half-mile long Malmskillnadsgatan Street begins at the bay that rings Sweden's parliament building, crosses over a glowing shopping plaza, and ends at a cluster of high-rise offices and a subway stop.

on a recent Thursday evening, its central street looks more like a small city's business district buttoned down after hours than an illicit sex market.

STOCKHOLM - If you want to trade money for sex, Stockholm's red-light district is likely to disappoint you.

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