The International Prostitutes Collective, of which the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and the US PROStitutes Collective (US PROS) are part, is a network of women of different races, nationalities and backgrounds, working at various levels of the sex industry. We campaign for the abolition of the prostitution laws and for legal, civil and economic rights for sex workers, including the right to protection from violence, to health care and to form or join trades unions.

On 8 March 2001, International Women’s Day, we will be part of the second Global Women’s Strike. Last year, women – including prostitute women – in over 64 countries took time off from waged and unwaged work in the first ever global strike, demanding a millennium which values all women’s work and all women’s lives. Masked sex workers marched through Soho, London’s best known red light area, in protest against local government attempts to evict them from their homes, while village women in India challenged their government representatives over their right to land, domestic workers in Peru demanded recognition as workers and the housewives trade union in Argentina called for ‘pensions without contributions for workers without wages’.

By bringing together women from all walks of life and making visible each of the many sectors we belong to, the Strike 2001 gives us the power to refuse to be divided into ‘good' and ‘bad’ women. Last year, the Strike was crucial to stopping the evictions in Soho as it made clear that far from being isolated, sex workers had of a national and international support. This year, the Strike will be crucial again to stopping the deportation of asylum seekers and immigrant sex workers who, on 15 February, were dragged from their flats in Soho – this was followed by immediate protest (see photo of ECP picketing the Home Office) and public outcry (see letter to the Guardian signed by a number of lawyers and other prominent people).

Sex workers are on the Strike co-ordinating committee. Unlike other international women’s events such as the World March for Women in October 2000, whose sixth demand called for the implementation of a UN Convention which attacks sex workers’ rights, the Strike makes visible every woman’s situation and contribution.

The US PROStitutes Collective have been pressing the city of San Francisco to count sex workers’ contribution to the city, and have recently won a resolution calling for violence against sex workers to be vigorously prosecuted and for the $7.6 million spent annually enforcing the prostitution laws, to be diverted into resources and services.

Why the demands of the Global Women’s Strike speak for sex workers:

PAYMENT FOR CARING WORK – IN WAGES, PENSIONS, LAND & OTHER RESOURCES
We are women like other women, we too do the work of caring for others. Over 70% of prostitute women are mothers mostly single mothers – a crucial difference between women and men sex workers who usually do not have such caring responsibilities. Instead of being labelled unfit mothers, we want the caring work we do to be recognised and compensated. If it were, we would not have to go into prostitution to support ourselves and our families.

A single mother from Australia who participated in Strike 2000, spoke for many of us:
"I seem to have spent all my life working very hard to attain very little. I worked from home doing outwork machining for 15 years . . . I gave up a second child to adoption because it was too hard to contemplate raising him in the grinding poverty I still endured . . . Finally in my early 30’s I became a prostitute . . . Long tiring hours and bosses so mean they make Dicken's Scrooge look a kindhearted fool . . . I went back to Uni two years ago . . . had to keep on working, supporting my son and myself be a full time student . . .Yup, I'll strike on March 8. I shall spend the day meditating and praying for gender justice. I won't go to Uni, I won't clean house or prepare a meal and I won't have sex with a man for love or money!"

Providing sexual services is an extension of the caring work women do for men from the cradle to the grave. Mostly men are the buyers and women the sellers – they have more money than we do. Women have struggled to refuse demands for free services, including sex, and to escape from rape and other violence in the home and outside. By putting a price on sex work prostitute women strengthen all women’s demand for the financial independence to choose the relationships we want.

PAY EQUITY FOR ALL, WOMEN & MEN, IN THE GLOBAL MARKET
Sex work often earns more than other jobs, allowing some of us a higher standard of living than we would otherwise have. However low our wages may be, they're usually higher than those of cleaners, secretaries, factory workers or rural workers. For most women, especially those of us in the South and in the poor inner-city areas of the North, the "choice" is often between destitution, domestic work or prostitution. Inequity from no pay, low pay or too much work, low women’s wages which are even lower for those of us who are Black, welfare "reform" and the extortionate prices we are forced to pay for the essentials of life such as water, heating, housing, etc., force millions of women into prostitution. We are then criminalised and stigmatised. Our children are also discriminated against – in many countries they are refused access to education because their mothers are prostitutes. Without literacy it is even more difficult for our children to earn a living wage.


PAID MATERNITY LEAVE, BREASTFEEDING BREAKS & OTHER BENEFITS. STOP PENALIZING US FOR BEING WOMEN
Women raise all the children of the world and care for its entire population, yet are denied the most basic resources. Instead of being valued, we are penalized for our physiological life and care giving work, discouraged and even prevented from breastfeeding. Those of us who work as prostitutes are also criminalized – it is considered normal for a man to have sex with many women, for free or paying, but the women he goes with are despised "dirty whores" – and denied access to healthcare because we are illegal workers. If our physiological differences were valued rather than denigrated and our work as mothers recognised, the treatment of all women and all those we care for would be transformed.

ABOLITION OF THE THIRD WORLD DEBT WHICH FALLS HEAVIEST ON WOMEN AND GIRLS.
ACCESSIBLE CLEAN WATER, HEALTHCARE, HOUSING , TRANSPORT AND LITERACY.
NON-POLLUTING ENERGY & TECHNOLOGY WHICH SHORTENS THE HOURS WE WORK
$800 billion is spent on military burgets worldwide. Yet $80 would provide the essentials of lie – water, basic health, nutrition, education and a minimum income. Globally, sex workers have provided the survival and welfare denies us by governments and the global market they defend. As our land, environment, services and other resources are stolen from us by structural adjustment programmes to repay the "debt", many women and children are forced into prostitution. We owe nothing. Whatever arrangements governments made about borrowing money, we had no part in them. We are the ones who are owed for centuries of unwaged and low waged work and now globalisation. The Strike is a way of claiming back that wealth, and of making visible prostitute women’s contribution to the liberation movements for women’s and civil rights, against slavery and colonialisation, as well as the present movement against globalisation.


PROTECTION & ASYLUM FROM ALL VIOLENCE & PERSECUTION, INCLUDING BY FAMILY MEMBERS & PEOPLE IN POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY
Poverty is the first violence and lies at the root of all other violence. As well as an end to poverty, we urgently need abolition of the prostitution laws which criminalise sex workers, increasing all women’s vulnerability to violence. The police often threaten and abuse us, and single out those of us who are Black for arrest and persecution. As long as violent men can rely on police and courts’ refusal to take attacks against us seriously, and governments use trafficking as an excuse for deportation, sex workers will continue to face assault, rape and even murder.

Men, particularly those in positions of authority, are often furious that we have some money of our own which allows us to refuse relationships which are violent against us and our children.


FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. CAPITAL TRAVELS FREELY, WHY NOT PEOPLE?
In the name of protecting victims, governments around the world, with the support of many so called feminist, are introducing anti-trafficking legislation aimed at preventing people from crossing international borders and facilitating deportation. We know from experience that such legislation does not provide protection from violence and exploitation – forcing women underground makes all women more vulnerable. Some of us are forced by poverty, violence, war, repression and/or ecological devastation, to leave our home countries and cross national borders. We are the women governments want to keep out. Having stolen the wealth of Third World countries, they want to prevent Third World people from getting some of it back. Those of us who are trapped in prostitution need what all women need to escape – human, legal, civil and economic rights, including protection from police and courts, benefits, the right to stay and the right to seek employment.

We are entirely unfunded. All our work is done by unwaged volunteers. We rely on media and speaking engagement fees, sales of books and accessories, and donations to continue our work. Donations, whether large or small, are always welcome.

Send us your "Striking Statement" and we’ll put it on the website, or Email: womenstrike8m@server101.com

"I want to strike to make visible the work of leading a double life. We face constant discrimination and abuse not only from police, politicians and the media but from "feminists" and even our own families. Many of us are scared to come out to our mothers, daughters/sons, in case they turn against us or feel ashamed. But we are not ashamed of what we have had to do to survive and we demand that other women support us just like we support them. NO BAD WOMEN JUST BAD LAWS!"

London, England
"I’m going on Strike against all the extra work Black and immigrant do, especially if we are sex workers. I went on the game after years of low-waged, dirty work – cleaning, catering, cookery, fast food -- plus office jobs where the combination of sexism and racism from bosses and co-workers was more work than the job itself, making your life hell. Because of racism in jobs and everywhere we are more likely to be forced into prostitution to support ourselves and families. Like every other industry, the sex industry is also racist, and on street it’s 10 times more dangerous. Black and immigrant women who are raped or attacked are least likely to report it. I am striking for more money and less work, for more resources and options, and for police time and resources be re-directed to protect all women; for a complete change for all women wherever we are."

Black woman
"I only went on the game for the money. It was not a career move. I was a single mother on welfare doing cleaning jobs to make life bearable. Hooking gave me more money and more time with my children. And we could all go on holiday at last. But then I was an illegal worker and for 13 years I’ve had to hide what I do in case my ex-husband or the school or a neighbour or someone in the community decided to report me and my partner to the police, social security or social services. I’ve know many prostitute women labelled unfit mothers and lose custody of their children and nearly lose their minds because it, when all they were doing was earning money so they could get decent food and clothes for their kids.

Single mother
"I’m not going to hook on 8 March. I’m going on strike against those horrendous prostitution laws which have destroyed so many women and children’s lives AND for a raise in social security - Tony Blairs salary will do, he looks comfortable. Then I won’t need to hook any longer."

"I’m going on strike on 8 March to show up the value of the work I do. I want recognition of the work I do raising my partner’s daughter who needs my attention and love even when I come back exhausted from work. I’m striking for recognition of the work I do campaigning for justice. If I got paid for all this work I wouldn’t have to work as a prostitute in order to have my own money. And I would be glad to give up this dangerous, exhausting and humiliating sex work. Dangerous because violent clients know that if they rob me or rape me they are more likely to get away with it. I would have to come out as a prostitute in order to report them and if it got to court my job would be used against me. Exhausting because I have to sound sweet when I feel murderous, sexy when I feel haggard and tired and interested when I am bored. Humiliating because I have to be intimate when my skin is crawling . . . but that’s not such an unusual experience. I slept with men when I was a teenager to get a roof over my head or to get a ride out of the village I grew up in and then I never had cash in my hand at the end of the evening."

The English Collective of Prostitutes and the International Prostitutes Collective invite you to an International Conference on prostitution 
NO BAD WOMEN, NO BAD CHILDREN, JUST BAD LAWS 
Saturday 4 December 9.30am – 6pm, London

All Women Count: Sex Workers more information

Letter to the Editor re Monica Coghlan