Jane Caro calls marriage "prostitution"

Feminist, author and education expert Jane Caro has divided public opinion after claiming marriage was a form of prostitution.

Ms Caro appeared on Monday night's special Festival of Dangerous Ideas Q&A episode and when asked if prostitution was a deliberate career choice, she said historically marriage was an example of this.

"I would argue that traditional marriage, which included conjugal rights, particularly when women were not able to go to work or were fired when they first got married, and were basically selling their bodies and their reproductive rights to their husband... was a form of prostitution," she said on the show.

"He bought them, by giving her room and board in return."

Fellow panellist and Swedish author Kajsa Ekman called Ms Caro's position "abstract".

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Arguing against prostitution as a form of empowerment, Ms Ekam said there were fundamental differences between marriage and prostitution.

"We're talking here about a world in which a lot of people in prostitution have sex with up to 15 buyers a day," Ms Ekman said.

"I think that (journalist turned sex worker Amanda Goff) might soon realise it wasn't really that empowering, and that it is not representative of the majority of people who enter prostitution.

"My definition of prostitution personally is it's sex between two people, one person that wants it and one person that doesn't. If you don't have that criteria you don't have prostitution."

Twitter users were quick to weigh into the debate, with support split.

Julian Burnside posted that Ms Caro made "great points" in her argument, while others said the comments were "immoral".

Since the program aired, Ms Caro defended her comments to Fairfax Media but said she had made a "historical analogy" rather than a comparison of modern marriage with prostitution.

"I talked about traditional marriage when they had conjugal rights - I didn't mention stay-at-home housewives at all," she said.

"And I'm sorry - I still think that historical analogy with the way marriage was (holds true). I think in some parts of the world (marriage is) arguably not all that far away from prostitution."

Ms Caro said she was not surprised by the criticism she has faced for her opinion.

"I think it's not uncommon for people to jump on something and distort it these days, which is really sad. It was, after all, a panel about dangerous ideas."

Morning news break – September 02