Well, Mick, it depends on what definition of power one is using. Mastery over one's self, or mastery over others.   In general, it seems to me that people who are intentionally exploitive of others actually lack a sufficient sense of personal power.    "If I can exploit or control others, then I am powerful."    This means their sense of being powerful is almost entirely dependent on what others do, think, or feel.

A pimp is a pimp, irrespective of gender, imo.

Legalization of prostitution might make it safer, but probably does not make it less exploitive.

Every transaction between a prostitute and a customer may not be exploitive. Many transactions between prostitutes and customers may be mutually exploitive. But I think there has been sufficient psychological and social research done over time and across cultures to make a reasonable assertion that prostitution is generally dependent on the exploitation, usually, of women. But the process begins long before a prostitute becomes a prostitute.   The process, for many, though not all prostitutes, begins with traumatic childhoods that include any combination of poverty, physical abuse, sexual abuse, substantial neglect. With addiction and/or mental illness.

High-end prostitutes are the exception, not the rule. College girls being promiscuous and getting paid for it are the exception, not the rule. Most of those college girls won't find themselves selling sex for long.   Many of them won't understand what they did to themselves until several years later, when the herpes virus emerges, the cervical cancer from HPV, the infertility from undetected chlamydia and PID, or they turn up HIV positive.

People who have hardscrabble lives - whether because of bad choices, lack of opportunities and resources, or an accident of birth - may be very good at surviver skills - and survival skills include manipulation and exploitation as well as the ability to become psychologically acclimated to abuse. The conditions that foster the development of these survival skills are not usually the conditions that foster the skills to thrive and be physically and psychologically healthy. (think Maslow's pyramid.)

Exploitation is exploitation. Some people may choose to put themselves in positions where they are exploited. Some people may be completely blind to the fact that they are being exploited, or have need to defend themselves from that knowledge.   Some people may very deliberately and consciously be exploitive, some may be blind or defended against seeing and acknowledging they are being exploitive. Exploiter and exploited are not at all mutually exclusive - in fact, it is probably most common for a person to engage in both behaviors. So many people are both victims and perpetrators.

That's my half cent worth.