A CO-ORDINATED international campaign is seeking to reframe prostitution, which is both a cause and a consequence of inequality between men and women, as simply a form of “work” no different from any other which should either be fully decriminalised or legalised.

Germany, the Netherlands and some other states have legalised systems where prostitution is controlled by the government and legal only in certain specified conditions. 

In 2003 New Zealand introduced full decriminalisation, which involves the removal of all prostitution-specific laws, including laws against pimping and brothel-keeping. 

The Nordic model approach understands prostitution to be harmful to individuals and to wider society. It aims to reduce demand and has several elements:

• It decriminalises people who sell sex, provides them with support services and help to leave the industry if they want to and ensures there are genuine alternatives for making a living
• It strengthens laws against trafficking, pimping, brothel-keeping and other activities by third parties who profit from other people’s prostitution
• Paying for sex is criminalised, with the aim of changing social norms and men’s behaviour.

This approach was first introduced in Sweden. It has now been established in Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, France, Ireland and Israel. Each country framed the law slightly differently and with different degrees of commitment and success. 

In theory full decriminalisation and legalisation are different but in practice they are very similar. Both result in huge increases in demand, massive expansion of the sex trade to cater to demand, and the designation of pimps, brothel-keepers and other third parties as respectable businesspeople.

Laws against trafficking are retained but hard to enforce. Most sex trafficking goes under the radar. No public funding is available to help women exit because prostitution is seen as just another job.

When there is a huge increase in demand, the supply of available women will need to increase exponentially. Not enough women will come forward voluntarily because women who have real options seldom choose a life in prostitution unless they have already been groomed into it by the culture around them or by individual perpetrators. It is therefore inevitable that brothel-owners will need contact with pimps, traffickers and organised crime groups recruiting through the “lover-boy” method, misrepresentation, coercion or force.  

Both legalisation and full decriminalisation greatly increase the profits of those who can ensure oversupply of women and drive prices down to increase and maintain market share. They dominate the industry at the expense of women involved in prostitution. 

Many German women involved in prostitution when it was liberalised in 2002 were not prepared to accept lower fees brothel-owners seeking to dominate the new market insisted on. 

In Germany and the Netherlands most women involved in prostitution are now migrants. The much lower prices in Germany have not reduced the flow of German sex tourists to countries where prices are even lower. 

Huge increases in demand do not increase what women involved in prostitution can earn. In Sweden the price of prostitution is much higher than in European countries where the sex trade is condoned. 

This is why the economic interests and safety concerns of people involved in prostitution, most of whom are women, are not the same as those of pimps, brothel-keepers and others facilitating the industry who make the largest profits, including traffickers and companies which own commercial sex websites. 

Groups calling themselves sex workers’ unions or collectives which include pimps and brothel-keepers and support full decriminalisation are trade associations, not trade unions. 

They are organising to increase demand and expand the industry, which results in lower pay for individual women and men in prostitution. These trade associations have never taken steps such as the industrial action taken by Aslef, RMT and other unions in recent years to get fairer shares for people providing services of the profits made at the top of their industries or to improve conditions.

Businesses don’t generally over-recruit unless they want to undercut rivals and dominate a particular labour market by lowering wages, including the wages of existing workers. Trade unions oppose these tactics which are exactly the tactics used by those who have profited most from both full decriminalisation and legalisation of prostitution. 

Massive expansion takes place following full decriminalisation or legalisation because the prostitution system always needs a supply of women greater than demand, whatever the level of demand is. 

Without an oversupply, sex buyers can’t make choices about who they pay for sexual acts and the price they are willing to pay for the power to do this. A provider who doesn’t provide choice will find that buyers will take their business elsewhere. 

The choices sex buyers, the vast majority of whom are male, make, and the monetary value they attach to being able to pay another person, most often a woman, not to say, “No,” are based on racist, misogynistic stereotypes, classism, fantasies of subjugation and conquest and myths about female sexuality.

Consumer protection legislation in Britain allows you to buy or sell goods or commodities of a particular description, such as 15-year-old Islay single malt whisky or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and agree a price based on this description. 

Employment practices, terms and conditions or rates of pay which discriminate based on any of the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 are unlawful. They are, however, standard practice in prostitution. 

Employers can sometimes discriminate if they can prove that having a particular protected characteristic, such as age, race or religion, is an “occupational requirement,” but employers must prove that the characteristic is essential for the job, related to the main tasks and that there is a good business reason. 

None of these are reasons why sex buyers maintain discriminatory payment hierarchies. The only “good business reason” would be needing to satisfy demand from buyers to engage in discriminatory practices as of right or lose your racist, misogynist and classist customer base. 

Permitting this only in a sector where consumers are almost exclusively male would be inherently discriminatory and likely to facilitate the spread of similar practices to other sectors, particularly “healthcare,” which the German sex industry likes to call itself, and social care. It would undermine the Equality Act 2010 itself.

Contracts involving paying for sexual acts are currently considered to be for an “immoral purpose” and are generally unenforceable by courts on the grounds of illegality. This restriction would have to change for prostitution contracts to be enforceable if full decriminalisation were introduced in England and Wales. Changing it could, however, have wider implications for other industries. 

What might happen in industries where predatory employers expect sexual services from staff seeking career advancement and often threaten or silence them with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)? In what circumstances would these expectations be “onerous and unusual” contract terms a court wouldn’t enforce if it would enforce them in prostitution? When would a “consistent course of previous dealing” between the parties or “the custom of the relevant trade” lead to a court considering the provision of sexual services to have been incorporated into the contract of an employee whose main role involved other activities? If “sex work is work,” when would sex not be “work”?  

Esther is a policy adviser at Nordic Model Now! (nordicmodelnow.org). She has a longstanding interest in legal and public policy relating to sexualised violence and domestic abuse and uses her own experience in the sex industry to reflect on these issues.