Holbeck Managed Zone: A Failure
This essay focuses on the Holbeck Managed Approach in light of its closure and explores the link between the feminisation of poverty, austerity politics and prostitution being encouraged to replace Welfare. Dr Em asks whether the feminisation of poverty is deliberate in order to create a class of women and girls who are available for men’s sexual exploitation or an accidental consequence of not considering sex-based inequality and oppression in economic measures. Read Dr Em’s previous post on the Holbeck Approach here.
By Dr Em
“The closure of the zone reflects how the selling of female flesh to men is not an adequate response to welfare cuts.”
Years of feminist campaigning and local opposition has led to the recriminalisation of pimps and punters in Leeds. For 7 years there was a free for all regarding the purchase of female flesh. In that time there was the murder of Diara Pionko and an increase in rapes and sexual assaults in the zone as Leeds sent the message that females were Objects for men’s use1.
The closure of the zone reflects how the selling of female flesh to men is not an adequate response to welfare cuts. Females are not another resource for men to exploit and profit from. The women and girls being bought and sold are not getting rich, the men involved in the trade are. The promotion and facilitation of the sale of women and girls to men was part of State ideologically driven neglect to meet the basic needs of its female citizens such as housing, food, access to education, access to employment and psychological safety. The debate is whether this was deliberate in order to create a class of women and girls who are available for men’s sexual exploitation or an accidental consequence of not considering sex-based inequality and oppression in economic measures.
I am of the opinion that Holbeck was a trial of how the U.K. government could market to the public joining the global industry and selling its poorest female citizens. Luigi Bernardi of the Università di Pavia researched taxation on the sale of women in European Countries. He noted the revenue losses for governments that protect females from the sex trade within their country. For example, ‘France has just become the fourth country in Europe to criminalize people who pay for sex, following the Nordic Model … [thus]Taxation is absent, and this means that Treasury loses out on an estimated $15 billion’.2 The language is notable, the sale of women’s bodies to men is described in market terms as losses or contributions to State revenue. As global governments have adopted neo-liberal economic doctrines since the 1970s and the maxim of the market the renewed Objectification of women has taken on a feverish pace.3 Specifically, the Holbeck managed approach was the result of a combination of years of sex trade lobbying, the cultural Objectification of women, the advancement of neo-liberal ideology and coalition austerity policies. However, that this happened under a Labour Council makes it worse.
The managed approach was introduced 1st October 2014, initially for a one year trial period, against the backdrop of the Cameron-Clegg coalition and biting cuts to welfare. Austerity politics had been brought in in 2010 in response to the 2008 global financial crash and shifted the responsibility from the banks, predatory sub-prime lenders and financial firms who sold debt tranches, to ordinary people.4 The prime minister appeared repeatedly on television telling the U.K. that we had ‘to balance the books’. Austerity politics did not fall equally and continued a ‘feminisation of poverty’, a term introduced by Diana Pearce in 1978, which had caught the renewed interest of global feminist campaigners since the 1990s.5 Published in 2004, Vancouver Rape Relief Centre drew attention to how ‘drug trafficking and prostitution are replacing welfare, health care, and education as the hope of the destitute’.6
Cuts to welfare impact women harder because ‘Women are poorer than men. As a worldwide average, women collectively earn slightly more than 50 per cent of men’s total earnings. In Britain, a woman earns 82p for every £1 a man earns and faces a much greater chance of living in poverty’.7 In the U.K. ‘£22 billion of the £26 billion ‘savings’ since June 2010 have come from women. Single mothers, the social group with the highest poverty risk (at 50 per cent), are particularly vulnerable’.8 In June 2016 a United Nations report was published which gave a damning verdict on the U.K.’s austerity politics. The report declared that ‘The Committee is deeply concerned about the various changes in the entitlements to, and cuts in, social benefits introduced by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, such as the reduction of the household benefit cap, the removal of the spare-room subsidy (bedroom tax), the four-year freeze on certain benefits and the reduction in child tax credits. The Committee is particularly concerned about the adverse impact of these changes and cuts on the enjoyment of the rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living by disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups, including women, children, persons with disabilities, low-income families and families with two or more children’.9 In 2018 the BBC reported how ‘"Julie", from Merseyside, never thought she would have to turn to sex work. But an eight-week wait for the single mum's first payment after transferring from her previous benefits left her "desperate", so when she was offered £30 for sex she took it’.10 In 2019 MPs heard from Laura Seebohm of the charity Changing Lives how ‘more women using the charity’s services reported that desperate poverty had driven them to sell sex. It could be sex for cash, or “sex for laundry, a bottle of cider, or for food,” she said. “One woman we took to a food bank in Doncaster said: ‘I don’t have to sell sex now”.11 The government had created the desperation and males had created ready demand.
In 2020 ‘the exact social consequences of these cuts were spelled out… in Michael Marmot’s report for the Institute of Health Equity: for the first time in a century, life expectancy has stopped growing and for women in poor areas actually fallen’.12 Leeds City Councillor Judith Blake stated in 2018 that ‘Our core funding has been cut by £251m since 2010’.13 She had been a strong supporter of the Holbeck zone for prostituting women since its inception in 2014. In a fiery Council meeting in November 2020 Councillor Carter stated that “Coun (Judith) Blake, Coun Scopes, Coun Coupar – you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves... You have had six years to sort this out and you haven’t. Stop shouting to the world about how good the managed zone is, stop pretending it works and stop messing about with people”.14 Indeed, Councillor Blake as leader of Leeds City Council during the prostitution period should be ashamed, she oversaw and supported female misery, an increase in trafficking, an increase in sexual harassment, an increase in sexual assaults, and she couldn’t imagine and implement another way for women and girls.15 Sir Keir Starmer rewarded Councillor Blake for her work in Leeds with a peerage in December 2020.16
Holbeck, and the ‘prostitution peerage’, reflects how Labour has fallen for the sex industry lobbying that ‘sex work is work’. If we pretend for a moment that having multiple men you don’t know or find mentally engaging or sexually attractive stick their penises in your mouth, anus and vagina many times a day, every-day, is work, then why are Labour listening to and prioritising industry executives and employers over the employed? In another industry, such as Tech for example, would Labour advocate the views of Jeff Bezos over the views of people working in Amazon warehouses? Or would Labour champion the desires of Mike Ashley for profits over the desires of those employed by the Fraser Group for at least the minimum wage and to be treated with dignity? If sex work is work, as Labour and other political parties espouse, then the allegations which ‘also surfaced of some workers being promised permanent contracts in exchange for sexual favours’ regarding Sports Direct should not be a problem.17 If sex work is work then isn’t it just like being asked to work weekends, complete extra admin or ‘close up shop’ in order to achieve a promotion or permanent contract?
Financial hardship has been reframed as a choice by the sex industry lobby. According to the lobby and those who swallow its guff, women have agency when they are sexually abused for money. Yet we consistently see that the women and girls who are prostituted have severely limited options available to them. It is like saying ‘it is a choice to starve’, ‘it is a choice to be homeless’, ‘it is a choice to have your benefits sanctioned’. It has been consistently reported how in England and Wales ‘the controversial new benefit is pushing many claimants into a debt trap. Some have been forced into prostitution in what's been dubbed survival sex, because they are so desperate for cash’.18 This has been raised repeatedly in Parliament, ‘a series of witnesses from specialist charities that work with women involved in prostitution told MPs on the work and pensions committee there was a strong link between benefits changes and so-called “survival sex”.19 Women’s stories do not contain much choice in them. For example, ‘Alison says she became a prostitute as a last resort after being left short of money by universal credit… Alison had her son - who is disabled - when she was 18 years old and has relied on the benefit system to support them both’, she described how "There are some weeks after you've paid your bills, you don't have enough and you think, 'I have to do it'’.20 Alison told the reporters how "I always have lots of showers. Once there was this guy, I could smell him on me afterwards - a big, disgusting man. He said he deliberately didn't wash for a week because he wanted to be near a woman that's clean. It's disgusting”.21 Alison stated "I do get scared of dying - some men take things to a whole other level".22 This choice between starvation and paid rape is limited, these women aren’t ‘choosing between prostitution and being a vet or a midwife or going to college to study’.23 It is not a choice when it is your only option.
Conclusion
When you listen to prostituted women, men and desperation are the cause. Not just the punters, pimps and groomers but in these women’s personal histories there is frequently child sexual abuse. Society needs to take this crime seriously and prison sentences need to be handed out which properly reflect the crime. Society must also invest in therapy for these girls and re-building their self-esteem and connection with their bodies. Those who have been sexually abused often disassociate from their bodies, a damaging mind body split, something prostituted women report themselves doing.
We need to adopt the Nordic Model, those being sold in prostitution are not criminals and should face no sanction but those selling them and purchasing them should be prosecuted. I want the victims of this trade to hold all the cards so to speak. We need exit services, counselling, rehabilitation, a daily routine to support women in their recovery, safe accommodation to be made available to the women who want to leave the trade. More broadly, I don’t want women to be put in this situation where their choices are so limited that having their bodies sold becomes an option. We need a stronger welfare state, better job and training opportunities, bursaries for further education, crisis payments for times of need, transition accommodation available with no or low deposit required, lower rents and rent caps, affordable childcare.24
1 Dr Em, ‘Holbeck: A Case Study in Hell’, Filia (8 September 2020), filia.org.uk/latest-news/2020/9/8/holbeck-a-case-study-of-hell
2 L. Bernardi, ‘Sex Working and Taxation in European Countries’, Siep, No. 737 (Giugno, 2018), p.7
3 Dr. Em., ‘The Renewed Objectification of Women, Part II: Prostitution, Porn and Surrogacy’, Uncommon Ground Media (3 May 2021), https://uncommongroundmedia.com/the-renewed-objectification-of-women-part-ii-prostitution-porn-surrogacy/
4 M. Singh, ‘The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis in Review’, Investopedia (11 January 2021), https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/financial-crisis-review.asp 5 D. M. Pearce, The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work, and Welfare, 11 URB. & SOC. CHANGE REV. 28
(1978), A. Rowe, ‘The Feminization of Poverty: An Issue for the 90's’, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism (1991), V. M. Moghadam, ‘The Feminization of Poverty in International Perspective’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 1998), pp. 225-249.
6 L. Lakeman, A. Lee & S. Jay, ‘Resisting the promotion of prostitution in Canada: A View from the Vancouver Rape
Relief and Women’s Shelter’, in: C. Stark & R. Whisnant, Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography (Melbourne, Spinifex, 2004), p. 219.
7 E. M. MacDonald, ‘The gendered impact of austerity: Cuts are widening the poverty gap between women and men’,
LSE (10 January 2018), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/gendered-impacts-of-austerity-cuts/ 8 E. M. MacDonald, ‘The gendered impact of austerity: Cuts are widening the poverty gap between women and men’,
LSE (10 January 2018), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/gendered-impacts-of-austerity-cuts/ 9 UNCESCR 2016:7 10 J. Quayle & D. Box, ‘'I was forced into prostitution by Universal Credit', BBC News (19 November 2018), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-46235842
11 P. Butler, ‘Universal credit hardship 'linked to prostitution', The Guardian (22 May 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/22/universal-credit-hardship-linked-to-prostitution
12 P. Toynbee & D. Walker, ‘The lost decade: the hidden story of how austerity broke Britain’, The Guardian (3 March,
2020), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/03/lost-decade-hidden-story-how-austerity-broke-britain 13 N. Lavigueur, ‘This is the true extent of how much government funding Leeds has lost’, Leeds Live (14 October
2018), https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/true-extent-how-much-government-15263420 14 R. Beecham, ‘How long before a child is abducted?’ – Leeds councillors clash over Holbeck managed zone’,
Yorkshire Evening Post (12 November 2020),
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/politics/how-long-child-abducted-leeds-councillors-clash-over-holbeck- managed-zone-3033414
15 Dr Em, ‘Holbeck: A Case Study in Hell’, Filia (8 September 2020), filia.org.uk/latest-news/2020/9/8/holbeck-a-case-study-of-hell 16 R. Beecham, ‘Baroness Blake? Leeds City Council leader gets House of Lords peerage’, Yorkshire Evening Post (22
December 2020),
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/politics/baroness-blake-leeds-city-council-leader-gets-house-lords- peerage-3076330
17 ‘Sports Direct staff 'not treated as humans', says MPs' report’, BBC News (22 July 2016), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-36855374 18 D. Bentley, ‘The secret way of changing your Universal Credit payments if you're struggling’, Birmingham Live (7
19 P. Butler, ‘Universal credit hardship 'linked to prostitution', The Guardian (22 May 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/22/universal-credit-hardship-linked-to-prostitution
20 R. McGarrell & N. Iqbal, ‘Universal credit: Single mums being forced into sex work’, BBC News (22 July 2019), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49013769 21 R. McGarrell & N. Iqbal, ‘Universal credit: Single mums being forced into sex work’, BBC News (22 July 2019), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49013769 22 R. McGarrell & N. Iqbal, ‘Universal credit: Single mums being forced into sex work’, BBC News (22 July 2019), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49013769 23 NMN, ‘FACT: Choice is complicated’, Nordic Model Now! https://nordicmodelnow.org/facts-about-prostitution/fact-choice-is-complicated/
24 Conclusion originally printed in: Dr. Em, ‘Prostitution, Neither Sex nor Work’, Object! (24 September 2020), https://objectnow.org/prostitution-neither-sex-nor-work/