![Give women in prostitution a voice and a way out! Searching for European solutions [Promoted content] | INFBusiness.com](/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/8d35d63cbd7757583fc4c3120a54ae3f.jpg "After lengthy negotiations, the European Parliament is set to vote in Strasbourg on the report calling for a Europe-wide approach to prostitution, by decriminalising people in prostitution and supporting those who want to leave it, while targeting sex buyers and those benefiting from the prostitution of others.")
After lengthy negotiations, the European Parliament is set to vote in Strasbourg on the report calling for a Europe-wide approach to prostitution, by decriminalising people in prostitution and supporting those who want to leave it, while targeting sex buyers and those benefiting from the prostitution of others.
Maria Noichl is an S&D MEP and spokesperson on women’s rights and the author of the EP report: ‘Regulation of prostitution in the EU: its cross-border effects and the consequences for equality and women’s rights’.
When the Russian war started, and millions of Ukrainian women and children were fleeing their homes to find protection in the EU, human traffickers and pimps were quickly lining up to exploit their particularly vulnerable situation. NGOs sounded the alarm warning against strangers offering jobs or shelter. It was, I believe, a turning point for some in Germany to finally open their eyes and understand that the current legalisation of prostitution is not a good solution. It benefits all those who earn from the prostitution of others, while it fails to protect those who end up in prostitution against their hopes and free will.
The topic of prostitution has finally made it to the European Parliament. Many would still prefer to shy away from discussing it, believing it does not concern them. I have to disappoint you: it affects us all.
It affects us as a society because we allow the most vulnerable among us to be dragged into a system they do not want to be in. Moreover, we as a society fail to offer them protection and alternatives.
It affects us as women, because the system of prostitution is the extended arm of the patriarchy that exploits women and commits violence against them.
It affects every one of us because prostitution reinforces stereotypes and normalises gender-based and racist violence. As long as it is socially accepted that women – the majority of people in prostitution being women and girls – are for sale, we cannot achieve real gender equality.
We must tackle prostitution at the European level because it has a strong transnational and socio-economic dimension and because it is strongly linked to organised crime that does not stop at borders. The majority of people in prostitution in Europe come from abroad, and in fact, mainly from much poorer countries.
There are very different regulations in each member state. For example Germany is evaluating its current system of legal prostitution, Belgium has just enacted a new law for further liberalisation, and the laws based on the so-called Nordic model (punishing the client, not the people in prostitution) in place in Spain and France are still pretty new. This patchwork of different regulations only fuels organised crime and human trafficking in the EU.
The topic has divided the feminist movement for a long time. However, there are more points we can agree on, than not. We must eradicate human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Women (and people in prostitution in general) should never be criminalised, as physical integrity and self-determination over one’s own life and body are fundamental rights that must be respected. They must be guaranteed access to health services, police and the judiciary. Finally, we must provide adequately funded exit strategies for those who wish to leave prostitution.
However, we cannot deny the gendered nature of prostitution and its inherent sexism: the vast majority of people in prostitution are women, while the vast majority of buyers are men, which leads to reinforcing the power relations of our society. There is also a racist dimension in which the most vulnerable women in our societies, often those who belong to ethnic minorities, are exploited.
The Dutch prosecution bodies estimate that around 70 % of the approximately 30 000 prostitutes in the country have been forced into prostitution by violence or lured into it by a ‘loverboy’ (a pimp pretending to be a boyfriend). According to Europol and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the liberalisation of all aspects of prostitution means that human trafficking can flourish and hide behind the ‘legal business’. Besides, even well intentioned liberalisation overlooks one crucial fact: the reasons why people are in prostitution. In most cases, this is not a conscious and voluntary decision, but a consequence of poverty, exclusion, or the lack of safe and legal migration possibilities. In short: it is the result of an absolute lack of alternatives. Only a small minority of people in prostitution see themselves as self-determined ‘sex workers’ whilst the vast majority would give up prostitution if they had an alternative.
In order to break myths and stereotypes, my report – which was already adopted by the committee on women’s rights (FEMM) – gives a voice to exactly these almost never heard of women. It focuses on what happens to women in prostitution on a daily basis. Let’s be clear: workers’ rights, social security and health insurance cannot fix this inherently violent, sexist, racist and degrading system. We must create adequately funded alternatives and enable a way out. We must invest in prevention and education as well as in better social and migration policies. We must give every woman a real choice to live their life the way they want; not a life that they think is the only option.
Currently, the best way to achieve this seems to be the Equality Model, which criminalises the purchase of sex. Introduced in Sweden in 1999, it has also had positive effects in France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Canada, Israel and Norway. Its main point is to reduce the demand side, as the demand for sex is the actual reason behind perpetrated suffering, coercion and violence. The demand constitutes the market and thus the basis for human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Obviously, there is room for improvement. Above all, there is often a lack of sufficient funding for the exit programmes, or the conditions to participate in such programmes are too strict.
We know that we will not eradicate prostitution completely. However, to change society and reduce demand, we need to first change the laws. Our objective is to find a European solution to a European problem that has so far been ignored, standing by vulnerable people whose exploitation means money for others.
Source: euractiv.com
