Prostitution study presented
Publicity campaign designed to ‘dissuade consumers’ to be aimed at men
ELCHE city hall’s plan to ban prostitution took another step forward with the publication of its study into women involved in the practice.
Councillor for equality Teresa Maciá said this was necessary because ‘prostitution is a clear attack on human dignity and the physical, psychological and sexual integrity of women’.
“For this reason it is a form of gender violence,” she declared.
While the council is working on its bylaw to fight prostitution and human trafficking for sexual exploitation, the data collected has shown that the two phenomena are different but intrinsically linked.
They mostly affect women who are in extremely vulnerable situations and from countries with ‘bigger problems’.
The typical profile of a female prostitute in Elche is young, mostly foreign – but in the main, legally resident.
These women ‘could have come from other cities in Spain’ and are in especially difficult situations.
The councillor said it is necessary to improve attention to prostituted women and to raise the awareness of social agents (including police, charities, shelters and healthcare centres) and the general public.
The proposal is to set up a specialised attention service for prostituted women and issue a guide to their rights, and to ensure that social services and agents record their situation as soon as they detect it. They will also have more power to detect victims of sex trafficking and prostitutes, and to offer them priority access to municipal programmes such as employment, training, housing and other resources.
Also, a publicity campaign designed to dissuade consumers would be aimed at men.
Furthermore, city hall will urge the national government to ‘regulate prostitution from an abolitionist point of view’.
The plan is to better understand the situation of these women in order to help them get out of prostitution if they want, and to help those affected by trafficking to report it.
When trying to establish the number of women affected, the local police found seven different websites, just one of which featured 49 prostitutes, in addition to which they found 13 in the street, plus those working in four clubs and five private residences.
The advertising they found was very explicit and ‘perpetuated stereotypes that women who enjoy sex are whores, if women are out partying they want sex, and women are sexual objects that any man can possess’.
Although the problem is not causing social alarm, action is ‘very necessary’ because ‘a significant number of women are being prostituted’ and this is becoming ‘increasingly hidden away in apartments and by different ways of plying the trade’, concluded the councillor.