Destitution and prostitution
The rise in prostitution merely illustrates the wretched underbelly of the Celtic Tiger economy, argues PATRICK CUNNINGHAM
GOVERNMENT ministers and the usual array of business groupies are warning us of hard times ahead, with the 26-County economy reflecting the global downturn. But there's one business that's thriving - prostitution.
Dublin has thousands more women working the streets compared with only a few years ago and what is disturbing is that the new recruits to the flesh trade are not the traditional older women of well-known red light districts but girls as young as 12-14.
The booming business has meant prostitutes competing for new patches to work. Sightings of women hanging around streets in areas of Dublin not accustomed to such activity, prompted irate parents recently to phone RTE's Liveline show.
Understandably, parents are anxious to protect their children from the consequences of the vice trade. One distraught mother told how her teenage daughter was attacked by a pimp who mistook her for one of his prostitutes.
The problem is that the issue will most likely be dealt with in a narrow focus on law and order, with calls for the Garda to crackdown on illegal activity. Residents of one of the new red light districts, Stoneybatter, say that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern promised them during the general election campaign that "he would do something about it" - no doubt meaning more arrests and prosecutions.
But the last time legislators got involved the situation just got worse. As part of the horse trading within the Fianna Fáil/Labour Coalition of 1992-1994, the decriminalisation of homosexuality was agreed to by Fianna Fáil only if there was a change in law in relation to soliciting. Up to that point, while prostitution itself was unlawful, soliciting was not. Legal changes contained within the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993, which brought freedom for some, saw a further criminalisation of women working in prostitution.
Criminalising women is unlikely to succeed, as prostitution is not known as "the oldest profession" for nothing, existing since the dawn of ages. Some things never change, however. The work still carries great danger for the women involved, often running the risk of being raped or robbed at knifepoint.
Law and order crackdowns only push the vice further underground, compounding crime and danger on the streets. In fact, fear of arrest is leading to heightened dangers. Women jeopardise their physical safety while working, particularly 'out on the street', as many may get into a client's car without due care for their own safety, for fear of being caught soliciting by the gardaí.
Provisions within the 1993 Act also have the effect of seriously deterring women from reporting violence to the gardaí for fear of being charged. Research has repeatedly found that women working as prostitutes experience severe sexual and physical violence in their everyday lives, overwhelmingly at the hands of the men in their lives - clients, pimps, and domestic partners.
However, if women speak up about assaults, they then identify themselves as prostitutes and therefore run the risk of being prosecuted if they seek to press charges against their attacker. The rights of women already battered by the degradation of prostitution are infringed again.
d the main motive for these women degrading themselves daily is to escape poverty. In other words, lack of decently paid jobs is forcing more and more women into a dirty business just to make ends meet. The wider spread of social background for these new entrants indicates a corresponding wider spread of economic hardship in modern society.
As one prostitute, a pregnant mother of three in her early 20s, said: "I would love a proper life so I wouldn't have to do this. But I have to feed my kids."
But there is a more important reason why the authorities will not address the issue more effectively. This is because it requires seeing the "bigger picture" of wider decay in Irish society - a decay which has been induced by their very own policies.
In short, the rise in prostitution merely illustrates the wretched underbelly of the Celtic Tiger economy. It reflects the increase in poverty that goes hand in hand with an economy that is based on low-paid jobs to satisfy foreign investors. The whole economy is geared around maximising corporate profits by keeping public health and wealth to a minimum and supplying an army of low-paid workers to the corporate grindstone.
Forget government platitudes about gender equality and opportunity. The main reason why female workers have been especially targeted over the last decade - and increasingly so - is because they are even cheaper to employ than their already poorly paid male counterparts.
The 26 Counties has the lowest-paid labour rates in the EU, and, according to latest official statistics, women here are paid on average 60%-70% of male earnings. Women are in the front ranks of Ireland's cheap labour army, typically occupying low-paid service jobs in shop retail and catering.
One former pregnant shop worker, for instance, recently told a Dublin court how when she asked her boss if she could use the toilet because she was suffering from morning sickness, the boss threw a plastic bag at her and, in front of customers, shouted: "Go puke in that."
Given the degrading experience for many women selling their labour in the legalised employment sectors, it's not hard to see why a growing number of them just take the further step of selling their bodies - and earning a lot more than Û430 a week, the official average weekly wage.
There is a tragic historical background to this. In the early 1900s, Dublin was the poverty capital of Europe, with rampant prostitution a major symptom of a wretched society. If it seems as if the clock has gone backwards, it is because generations of political parties here have betrayed the ideals of the 1916 Easter Rising Proclamation of democratic freedom, independence and, crucially, equality between men and women.
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