Sex workers in Belgium to receive pension contributions and maternity leave under labour overhaul

Sex workers in Belgium will be entitled to receive contributions towards pensions from brothel owners and other benefits such as maternity leave under labour laws due to come into force in the coming months.

You can spot the shop fronts of former brothels in Brussels by the large floor-to-ceiling windows. As areas became gentrified and some authorities started to crack down – or as the trade began to move online – many shut and now host trendy cafes and restaurants.

Sex workers still advertising their services by sitting in windows are mainly confined to the city’s red light district, a long street in a rundown area near the Brussels-North train station. Some of the businesses have less discreet names than others. Club Virgin and Touch and Go stand out.

Historically, the response to sex work by Belgian authorities was usually one of toleration. While the act itself was never criminalised, soliciting clients on the street, leasing a premises to a sex worker or directly running a brothel was illegal until 2022.

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The Belgian parliament went a step further at the start of this month when it passed a labour law that has been described as the first of its kind. The legislation will allow sex workers to enter into recognised employment contracts, giving them access to benefits such as health insurance, holidays, maternity leave and unemployment supports if they quit or are laid off. The law gives sex workers the right to refuse clients and decline to perform certain acts, as well as stopping at any point. The parliament also introduced a ban on people running official brothels if they have been convicted of serious crimes.

Utsopi, a trade union for sex workers in Belgium which lobbied for the law, has its offices on one end of the Brussels red light district. When I dropped by earlier this week many of the windows along the street were empty, but that was probably to be expected given it was a Monday morning.

Daan Bauwens, a policy officer with the organisation, said while the sex work sector was traditionally allowed to operate in plain view, that still varies between postcodes. The red light district in Brussels is split between two local councils. “You had two different police regulations… It leads to chaos and nobody knowing what the real rules are,” he said.

Sex work was banned during the Covid-19 pandemic under public health laws, and afterwards there was a push at national level to regulate the sector.

Ireland takes a different approach and in 2017 moved to what is known as the Swedish model, which criminalises the purchase of sex and shifts police focus on to clients and brothel owners rather than sex workers. Organisations representing sex workers are fiercely opposed to the approach as they say it pushes the industry further underground.

“The Swedish model is an absolute disgrace…it leads to violence, it leads to risk,” Bauwens said. Criminalising brothels, which could be a small number of sex workers in business together, means people work in more dangerous locations, he said. “To say no woman could ever in her right mind choose to do this kind of activity, who are you to say what women can and can’t do with their own bodies?”

Magaly Rodríguez García, an associate professor in KU Leuven university who studies the history of sex work, said the smartphone has changed the industry. “When you work in a window you have to pay for the window, or if you work in a champagne bar or a massage salon you have to pay for those things. Where with your smartphone if you have an apartment, if you don’t mind receiving clients in your own apartment, you can do it on your own.”

The red light district of the port city of Antwerp, known as the Seamen’s Quarter, which is controlled by a permit system, was considered “the best place to work”, she said. “Even there you see window prostitution has declined.”

The success of the new labour law will largely depend on sex workers wanting to regularise their employment and brothel owners respecting that wish. “Many of the women who are running brothels are sex workers or ex-sex workers, which does not mean that they treat their personnel in a respectful manner. I mean sex workers are not saints…Nor is anyone else,” said Bauwens.