La reforma del marco legal sobre prostitución. ¿Por qué varones y mujeres no piensan igual?

This article addresses the discussion about how the legal and regulatory framework for prostitution in Spain should be reformed. Basically two policy proposals are distinguished: the abolitionist proposal, or Swedish model, based on criminalizing the client of prostitution services, and the decriminalization, or “Dutch model”, based on regulating prostitution as one more economic activity. After making an overview of this policy discussion, three specific empirical questions are addressed: the first consists of knowing the degree of social support that each of these two options have. The second consists of measuring the degree to which the support for both options differ between women and men. And the third tries to explain why there are systematic gender differences in these supports. Among the determining variables of these gender differences are the fact that there are more women than men who think that prostitution is a form of violence, or who think that limits must be placed on the market's sphere of influence. In order to address these questions, a survey was carried out on a Spanish sample of 997 people, and several hypotheses were formulated and contrasted through two generalized linear structural equation models (GSEM). From these results a series of economic policy recommendations were derived.