Should SEX WORK be decriminalised?

Nobody wants a brothel on their doorstep, but recognising prostitution as work could protect women, says Michelle Hather

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Sex work is having another Pretty Woman moment. Like Julia Roberts in 1990, the hooker played by Mikey Madison finds love, of a sort, in Anora, the big winner at this year's Oscars. Director Sean Baker says his aim was to chip away at the 'unfair stigma' of sex work. So is the world's oldest profession about to become just like any other job?

In the UK - except Northern Ireland - exchanging sex for money is legal. It's the law around finding clients that lands sex workers in trouble. Loitering for business, working with others inside premises and advertising sexual services are all outlawed under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Calls for change

Advocates say this criminality drives sex work underground. They call for decriminalisation - the end of all prostitution-specific laws, requiring sex workers to simply abide by the same employment, planning, health and safety rules as the rest of us.

'In countries where sex work has been decriminalised, criminal laws have been replaced with health and safety rules, and we need the same here,’ says Laura Watson of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP). ‘We don’t think women should have to choose between simply making ends meet and breaking the law.’

The ECP estimates there are around 73,000 sex workers in the UK, 88% of whom are female. When times are tough economically, the numbers rise. An ITV Wales This Week report in 2024 found the number of women selling sex in Wales had almost doubled in 18 months.

‘The lifelong impact of criminalisation is immense, considering most women are just trying to get by, and to feed themselves and their children,’ says Laura.