Under the red light: The hidden lives of Singapore’s sex workers

It is a humid Tuesday morning in Geylang.

As she does every week, 58-year-old Serene (not her real name) walks the narrow lorongs – Malay for lanes – with a tote bag of chilli guava chips swinging by her side. Near Lorong 16, she spots two women standing outside a row of shophouses.

“I haven’t seen you before,” Serene says in Mandarin. “Did you just arrive?”

One smiles, a little wary. “Last week.”

They chat about food and home towns. The answers are short, until Serene asks how long they plan to stay.

“Just a few weeks,” one says, before adding: “I won’t overstay. Are you a police officer?”

Serene laughs. “No, I work around here,” she says, slipping a packet of chips into the woman’s hand.

After 10 years of these walks, she no longer needs to ask what brings them here. A part-time outreach worker with Operation Mobilisation, a Christian group, she sees her role as simply showing care.

“We’re not here to rescue anyone,” Serene says. “But if someone looks troubled, we might ask if there’s something we can do.”

What she witnesses each week – the quiet exchanges, the guarded smiles, the women who come and go – is part of a much older story.

To understand the work she does today, it helps to trace how the sex trade took root in Singapore, a story that began with the island’s founding as a colony.

The second census in 1826, nine years after Sir Stamford Raffles arrived, counted just 13,750 residents and revealed a stark gender gap: 5,747 Chinese men to 341 Chinese women and 2,208 Indian men to only 40 Indian women. There were 2,501 Malay males and 2,289 Malay females.

The census highlighted Singapore’s growth as a rapidly expanding, male-dominated port city, one with a huge demand for sex workers.

By 1884, Singapore had about 60,000 Chinese men but only 6,600 Chinese women. Of the women, an estimated 2,000 -– mainly Cantonese and Teochew women -– worked as prostitutes. It is believed that as many as 80 per cent of young Chinese girls who arrived in the late 1870s were sold into brothels. A 1990 paper in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies estimated it as, even then, a multimillion-dollar trade.

Some of the women entered the trade by choice. Many more were pushed into it by poverty or sold by their families. Young migrants from rural China and Japan flowed through ports like Nagasaki and Canton before landing in Singapore’s brothels.

By 1905, Middle Road had earned the nickname “Little Japan”. Official records listed 633 Japanese women working in 109 brothels clustered in the area.

With the trade booming, the colonial authorities abandoned attempts to suppress it outright and pivoted to regulation – licensing brothels, mandating inspections and, via the 1870 Contagious Diseases Ordinance, spelling out operating rules.

This colonial legacy of regulation rather than prohibition continues to shape Singapore’s approach today, creating a complex legal landscape that both acknowledges and restricts the industry.

According to a 2023 study by the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, at any given time, there are approximately 8,030 female sex workers in Singapore. 

Its researchers used the Network Scale-Up Method, a technique designed to measure hidden or hard-to-reach populations. Instead of surveying sex workers directly, they asked a representative sample of Singapore residents how many people they personally knew who were involved in sex work, then extrapolated the figures based on average social network sizes.

Of these women, around 800 to 1,000 work in more than 100 regulated brothels in Singapore’s main red-light district, Geylang. While there are no official statistics, the figure is drawn from anecdotal accounts by former sex workers, and volunteers who conduct weekly outreach in the area.

Regulated brothels, however, represent only a small slice of the larger picture. An underground economy sprawls far beyond Geylang’s lanes, spilling into massage parlours, KTV lounges, beauty salons, escort agencies and a digital marketplace that runs from private chat channels to subscription platforms like OnlyFans.

Even so, the numbers are porous. The study does not capture male or transgender workers, freelancers operating solo out of rented hotels and apartments, small collectives, or those working under agents who take cuts, making the true size of the industry hard to pin down.

“8,030 is just an estimate,” says Dr Rayner Tan, an assistant professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, who was involved in the study.

He notes that due to the stigma surrounding sex work and the fact that most Singaporeans are unlikely to know someone in the trade, the actual number could range from 3,980 to 16,200.

Most of the workers are transitory migrants who enter on tourist visas and leave after a few weeks. Singaporeans and local residents make up only a small fraction. According to Project X – a non-profit organisation that has spent more than a decade offering social, emotional and legal support to sex workers – locals, including permanent residents and those on long-term visit passes, make up just 15 per cent to 20 per cent of Singapore’s sex industry.

Project X’s executive director Vanessa Ho says it is hard to pin down why they enter the trade. Circumstances vary so widely that the term “sex worker” can obscure as much as it reveals. What links these lives is not a single cause but a tangle: debt, caregiving burdens, wage stagnation, weak protections and the blunt fact that the work pays.

“A single mother’s story will be so different from a transgender sex worker’s story. Somebody from Indonesia will have a vastly different story from someone from China or Vietnam. People’s stories are more complex and a lot more nuanced than what we think,” says Ms Ho.

In 1976, a government programme – the Medical Surveillance Scheme – was launched to control sexually transmitted diseases among commercial sex workers.

Under the scheme, brothel-based sex workers must undergo regular screenings for sexually transmitted infections and HIV at the Department of Sexually Transmitted Infections Control Clinic or other designated clinics.

“It also allows for voluntary participation, including for those already in the trade but not registered under a formal system, and covers arrestees, suggesting some level of coordination with law enforcement,” explains Dr Tan.

For the women working in regulated brothels, the rules shape everyday life in the most intimate ways.

The brothels are monitored for health and safety, and workers must undergo regular medical checks. There is also a 100 per cent condom-use policy, although how strictly enforced it is remains unclear.

From a public health perspective, Dr Tan says there are pros and cons to such regulations.

Sex workers gain access to sexual health resources and operate within a more formal, legally recognised system.

“But with only around 1,000 sex workers enrolled out of an estimated 3,980 to 16,200 in Singapore at any one time, the majority remain outside (the regulation),” he adds.

The map of sex in Singapore does not end in Geylang. For decades before its closure and redevelopment in May 2023, Golden Mile Complex in Beach Road was a beacon for Thai workers orbiting pubs and karaoke rooms. Those from South Asia – mainly India and Bangladesh – are active around Desker Road in Little India. Before many outlets lost their public entertainment licences in 2023, Orchard Towers was known for its seedy nightlife of bars, clubs and discos.

Behind the facades of these neighbourhoods run a web of arrangements as varied as the people in them: freelancers advertising online; masseuses offering “extras” at their discretion; hostesses whose work blurs performance and intimacy; and innocuous shopfronts that become something else behind a second door.

Together, these shifting neighbourhoods chart the evolving geography of sex in Singapore, each community tied to different migrant flows and market demands.

In 2004, alarmed by a surge of bars and the growing visibility of sex workers, Joo Chiat residents banded together as the Save Joo Chiat Working Group to curb prostitution in the neighbourhood and stem the nightly influx of male patrons.

A Sunday Times report in December that year noted that male residents complained of being harassed by streetwalkers who openly quoted prices, while female residents were sometimes mistaken for sex workers. The residents also raised concerns about spillover problems, such as noise from karaoke lounges operating until 3am and drink driving by patrons.

Mr Colin Chee, a Joo Chiat resident who coordinated the group’s first meeting, said then: “Our objective is to bring back the old kampung spirit, where residents can raise their families in a decent, safe and secure environment.”

Meanwhile, the make-up of those involved in sex work is changing: tourists pushing the spirit, if not the letter, of their visas; long-term special pass holders topping up unsteady pay; and permanent residents like Dewi, 40, an Indonesian mother who values the flexibility because she can be present for her children and pay the bills when her husband cannot.

Even though sex work itself is not explicitly illegal in Singapore, many related activities surrounding it are: soliciting, working without a valid visa, pimping and running an unlicensed brothel. The result is a narrow space where a regulated part of the trade continues under strict supervision, while the rest remains subject to enforcement.

Raids are a constant. In June 2024, the authorities carried out more than 1,000 multi-agency operations, with more than 1,400 individuals checked and 512 arrests made. At Cuppage Plaza, a KTV lounge was raided again just months after the last operation – underscoring that even repeated crackdowns are not enough to deter illegal activities.

Lawyer Mohamed Baiross of IRB Law tells The Straits Times: “Workers are arrested primarily to investigate whether coercion, trafficking or exploitation has occurred, and whether the premises constitute an unlicensed brothel.”

He adds that enforcement targets organisers, operators and those who profit from prostitution, while patrons are rarely prosecuted.

“There is no general statutory provision criminalising the mere purchase of sexual services from an adult in a private, consensual setting,” Mr Baiross explains, adding that liability may arise in specific circumstances, like sexual activity with minors or trafficked people.

“The law’s main objective is to dismantle organised vice networks rather than penalise individual customers,” he says.

In a 2024 parliamentary reply, Home Affairs Minister and then Law Minister K. Shanmugam confirmed that enforcement is focused on illegal operators and potential exploiters, with the twin goals of maintaining public order and preventing abuse.

As part of their enforcement operations against vice activities, the police “conduct interviews with every commercial sex worker to establish the circumstances of each case”, said Mr Shanmugam.

“Officers who conduct such interviews are trained to recognise indicators of abuse, exploitation and trafficking. If there are prima facie criminal offences made out, investigations will be conducted,” he added.

Ms Ho, however, questions the effectiveness of such actions.

She says: “The fact is, we see the pimps remain, and every month, there’s a new batch of girls. They catch the girls, send them home and, within 48 hours, a new group arrives.”

Women are sent home only for others to take their place, she argues, while those managing and profiting from the system typically remain.

Indeed, for sex workers, especially migrants without valid permits, seeking help can be perilous. Reporting assault or other crimes may trigger immigration checks, solicitation fines, and investigations that stretch far beyond the original complaint.

Lawyer Bestlyn Loo, who leads Providence Law Asia’s pro bono portfolio, says investigations into the complainant are “almost a given” because offences tied to sex work are clearly defined in legislations such as the Immigration Act, the Women’s Charter and the Penal Code.

“Their ability to seek protection when crimes are committed against them is limited because of the unusual legal and immigration circumstances they are in,” she adds.

She cites a pro bono case in which a sex worker reported fraud and assault after a client refused to pay. The client was eventually charged and convicted, but the complainant spent 10 hours in lock-up, had her phone confiscated and was required to remain in Singapore for three months to assist in investigations. During this period, the sex worker slept on a couch at Project X’s office. Faced with such consequences, many victims choose silence over speaking up.

When crimes do come to light, they reveal the exploitation that illegal sex workers often endure at the hands of pimps and customers.

In 2021, Singaporean agent Tan Boon Kheng was jailed 15 months for exploiting several Thai sex workers under his charge. He arranged for their lodging, confiscated their passports and told them they had to complete their “contracts” before the travel documents would be returned. Each woman was also required to pay $1,200 to retrieve her passport, a tactic designed to deter them from leaving.

In a 2019 case, forklift driver Chew Teng Wee was sentenced to 14 years’ jail and 24 strokes of the cane for raping a Vietnamese performer he met at a KTV lounge. Posing as a client, he offered her $200 for sex at his home, then claimed he had no money. When she refused, he brandished a knife and raped her.

To people like Jason – an Indonesian-Italian sex worker who works across Europe and Asia – criminalisation eliminates neither demand nor supply. It merely pushes everything underground and gives abusers leverage.

“If someone wants to travel somewhere to do sex work, he or she is going to do it anyway, whether it’s legal or not,” says the 25-year-old, who tells ST that he graduated in international relations and diplomacy from University College London in 2021. He got into sex work at 19 to avoid crushing student debt.

He flies into Singapore a few times a year for the same reason bankers do: affluence. Where money flows, clients follow, he says. Working from a rented house, he sees five to six carefully screened clients – both men and women – a day, charging about $500 a session.

His biggest worry is not the violent client, which he says is rare in Singapore, but the undercover sting.

Likewise, Dewi is cautious about the possibility of a raid. The parlour where she works is open round the clock, but the women usually come in late in the morning and leave past midnight, rotating the first shifts. Walk-ins are accepted but regulars are preferred. Prices are discussed before anything happens and the rule about condoms is iron.

Although she is a permanent resident, working in an unlicensed brothel is a charge that could upend her life very quickly. She tells her family little about the details and hopes to work a few more years before leaving the trade behind.

Susan, a Malaysian transgender woman, began sex work in Desker Road in her teens. She tells ST about the informal systems of protection she and her peers built, pooling money to pay an unofficial guard who hovered nearby, ready to step in if a client became aggressive. For years, she worked without serious incident, never reporting to the authorities because the act of reporting would have made her the subject of investigation.

Then one night in 2018, she took home a man who turned out to be a plainclothes officer. After a brief stint in jail, she left Singapore and has not returned.

These enforcement realities create the dangerous paradox that sex workers like Susan and Jason navigate daily, seeking safety in a system that criminalises their existence.

In the absence of legal protection, many rely on informal safeguards. For more than a decade, French anthropologist Nicolas Lainez studied the informal “quasi-family networks” that help Vietnamese sex workers travel to and work in Singapore. These tight-knit systems of friends and contacts arrange travel, provide housing and share crucial information on safety and pricing.

What do sex workers want? The answers of those interviewed by ST differ, but a few refrains recur.

They want less stigma. They want the public to see them as people who make decisions under constraints, not as caricatures of vice or perpetual victims.

“We’re not invisible. We’re not victims. We’re just people trying to live with dignity, like everyone else,” says Jason, adding that he would happily pay tax in Singapore if the system recognised his work openly.

Such voices highlight the gap between the law’s framing of sex work as vice and the workers’ plea to be seen as people making constrained choices.

What frustrates many is that media coverage, particularly in tabloids, tend to focus only on the women providing the services, not the customers buying them.

That kind of one-sided portrayal, they say, only reinforces stigma and makes it harder for sex workers to be seen as part of society.

Susan says: “People have called the police on us just for standing around.”

Project X’s Ms Ho sees this as a fundamental flaw in how the system deals with sex work.

“The sex industry doesn’t survive just because of supply. If anything, it’s the demand that keeps it going.”

She believes that recognising sex workers as part of society is crucial.

“Changing the way people think, from the authorities to even those in social service, would go a long way in helping sex workers get the support they need and be treated with dignity,” says Ms Ho.

It is within this complex landscape of regulation, enforcement and underground networks that people like Serene continue their quiet work, offering human connection in spaces where visibility and vulnerability intersect.

As she leaves Lorong 16, the two women wave goodbye, packets of chips in hand. The streets wake, and Geylang’s rhythm resumes.