According to Sky News, the cost of living crisis in the United Kingdom has encouraged more British women to enter the prostitution market.
With record inflation and wages mismatched by rising prices and electricity bills, calls to the north London-based English prostitutes’ association have risen by a third this summer.
“Today, the cost of living forces women to engage in sex work in many different ways, whether on the street, in the workplace, or online,” said group spokeswoman Nikki Adams, who has helped thousands of women for over 30 years.
She added: “Everywhere we see that people (women) come into this business from a desperate situation. This means that they are less able to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. It also means that the conditions of sex work are deteriorating to the point where they put women’s lives at risk.”
“One of the women started spending evenings outside just long enough to pay all the bills,” Adams continued. “She didn’t have the opportunity to work indoors, although it would have been safer and she would have preferred it.”
She noted that “although the woman says the money saved her life, she fears her abusive ex-partner will find out and use it against her through social services.”
According to Adams, the current crisis means that in addition to first-time sex workers, people (women) who were able to get out of it are now forced to return to it for economic reasons.
“They are being pulled back into this because they either lost their so-called direct jobs during the coronavirus crisis or their jobs don’t cover what they need to survive,” she said.
Adams supports a 40-year-old Bristol woman who worked as a freelance prostitute in homes and hotels for almost a decade when she was in her twenties, but eventually found a job as a saleswoman and returned to work in the sex industry.
“She’s working for an agency this time and is shocked by the conditions. Some women have to have unprotected sex,” Adams said in these conditions.
And the Sky News report talked about other ways that women have sex to pay their bills while online, through subscription services on sites like OnlyFans.
But while some in the industry describe it as a safer and more empowering take on traditional work, there are warnings that it could put women at risk of harassment and extortion.
“We’re working with a woman in her early twenties who worked in retail and moved out of her parents’ home, but when the coronavirus crisis hit, she couldn’t pay her bills,” Adams said.
She added: “She created an account on OnlyFans and worked for several months, started creating a profile for herself when she was attacked by a man who started stalking her, he managed to find her personal Facebook page and became a very serious stalker. .. He tracked down her family and told his younger brother About the nature of her work, the woman was forced to move.
Nikki McNeil, a women’s support worker at Beyond the Streets, a Southampton and London-based charity that helps people find their way out of the sex industry across the UK, says she and her colleagues are also seeing an increase in calls. “sex for survival”.
She told Sky News: “We call it that because it’s the only choice these women can make to survive. This is done to meet basic needs in order to get enough money for food and rent.”
McNeil spoke of a mother who shares custody of her children with her ex-partner: “She finally has a house, but she doesn’t have a fridge or money to buy one, so she uses a bag she puts out the window to keep her food cold.” “.
“Due to the fact that she was subjected to domestic violence and coercion in the past, she is now engaged in prostitution in order to earn enough money for her children,” she added.
Sex workers at home are 10 times safer than working outside, according to a study by the charity National Ugly Mugs.
But while selling sex in one place is legal in England and Wales, working with other people is a crime, and working for an agency also comes with other risks.
A government spokesman told Sky News: “We understand that people are hurt by higher prices and we are offering £1,200 direct payments to low income families in addition to £400 energy payments to vulnerable people. law relating to prostitution, and we are committed to combating the abuse and exploitation associated with sex work.”
Britain is facing a humanitarian crisis amid rising prices, and many people may be faced with a dire choice: abstaining from food to warm their homes or living in extremely cold, humid and unpleasant conditions, according to the country’s National Health Service. This, in turn, can lead to disease outbreaks throughout the country.
Source: Sky News