Unemployment, a meltdown of the “real economy” and six years of austerity has led to a third of Greeks living below the national poverty level, i.e. linked with local living standards and cost-of-living adjustments. This is well-known and well-documented, however, something that has slipped below the radar is the fact that joblessness may have led to more and more women turning to prostitution.
International Business Times reports that there are around 8,000 sex workers in Greece.
A study by the Greek Center for Social Sciences at Panteion University found that the sex trade soared by 150% since the start of the crisis, driven by a need to put food on the table after the country’s economic downturn – and that was before the official default to the IMF on June 30. Those figures touch on the “supply side” (more people willing to offer sex for money), it doesn’t calculate if demand for paid sex rose during the period, remained the same or … decreased.
Human Rights Watch senior research assistant Eva Cosse is worried. “As austerity measures have been carried out, HIV, suicide and depression have increased and hundreds of thousands of people have been locked out of the health system altogether. Some live on the streets and others go there to find drugs or to find clients for sex.”
The prices for the performance of sexual acts have dropped as the supply rises.
Rather than solve their problems, prostitution has worsened them. Many are now trapped in a cycle of illegal street prostitution to fund an addiction, a model seen practically everywhere in the world, developed or not.
One question for academically sound, peer-reviewed and published research now and in the future is whether cuts to health programs — due to austerity or other reasons — actually cause an increase in drug use, drug peddling or both, given that both sides involve demand- and supply-side transactions using money Another paramatre is what type of drug use increases, if it increases, i.e. “soft drugs”, synthetic drugs, imported substances etc.
The same question can be posed with riskier sex: for instance, does an economic downturn cause some sex workers to offer services without the use of condoms and spermicides, as the latter add to costs? Additionally, do customers offering more money for “unprotected sex” find more willing sex workers due to the crisis.
Although austerity in Greece and some other European countries has certainly caused hardship, it’s also important to keep a perspective with international norms and standards, as in socialist-heavy Venezuela, for instance, a pack of condoms was recently priced at a cool …$744.
In 2012, there was a huge media circus when the police arrested 17 HIV-positive sex workers as part of a crackdown streetwalking and then disseminated their photographs to the press.
Though street prostitution is illegal, there are many more thousands of sex workers than those legally registered as prostitutes, with many brothels operating as so-called “modeling studios” or massage parlors. Legal brothels must have only one registered prostitute per shift on the premises. The woman must be over the age of 21 and …unmarried! Also, a cleaner, usually a female, on the premises must be over the age of 56!
A prostitute poses with a client at the Princess(Prinses) Gentleman’s Club, in Amsterdam, Holland., Thursday May 31, 2002 in one of the rooms where members will be entertained. Photographer:Richard Mills/Bloomberg News
