From the petition -
'The University of Leicester has introduced a student sex work policy and two toolkits (one for staff and one for students) and has obtained funding from the ESRC to roll them out to universities across the UK.
These documents claim to be aimed at supporting “students who are sex workers” but they read more like a guide to getting into the sex trade and fail to provide substantial support for students in difficulties.
Picture this: a young female student is being coerced into the sex industry by her boyfriend to fund his drug habit. She turns to the toolkit for advice but there’s no guidance about protecting herself from coercion and pimping. There’s not even a mention that they are common in the sex trade.
What about a young woman who realises she’s made a terrible mistake and wants to get out? Again, no help whatsoever. The toolkits fail to mention a single organisation whose primary focus is helping women quit the sex trade. None of the organisations listed view prostitution as a form of gender-based violence – as both a cause and consequence of the enduring inequality between the sexes – and all favour the full decriminalisation of the industry.
Warnings about the well-documented physical and psychological harms that prostitution causes? Total silence. Signposting to guidance on budgeting, hardship loans and grants, and other employment options? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
How can this be justified?
Would a toolkit for students who are drug users fail to warn of the potential harms of drug use? Would it exclude any mention of support to quit drugs? Would its list of organisations that help drug users include only those that are lobbying for the full decriminalisation of all drugs? Of course not.
While the documents don’t explicitly promote prostitution as a reasonable response to students struggling to pay their tuition or halls of residence fees, that is the implicit message. By using the “sex work” terminology, the documents frame prostitution as a normal form of work and not as the violation of human rights recognised under international law.
Freedom of information requests have revealed that the university took a very narrow view of the potential impact of the policy and toolkits and considered only the impact on those who are already involved in the sex industry. They did not consider that vulnerable female students might interpret the advice as the university sanctioning involvement in the sex industry as a positive way of paying their halls of residence fees and other university expenses, and that this could lead to more young women entering the sex industry and being harmed within it and further disadvantaged.
The university did not consider other possible consequences of framing the sex industry as a positive option – for example, that male students and staff might interpret this as the university sanctioning the buying of sex and could lead to men increasing or starting sex buying activity. They didn’t consider how this might affect men’s understanding of consent and the impact of this on their intimate partners, and on relationships between men and women generally. This is unforgiveable – particularly as we are currently witnessing an epidemic of male violence against women and girls, especially in universities and colleges.
We maintain that when developing the policy and toolkits, the university neglected its responsibilities under equality law to work to eliminate the disadvantage, discrimination and harassment of women and other protected groups, and to work to improve relations between men and women generally. We maintain that they failed to ask the questions necessary to fulfil their responsibilities as an educational institution or to consult with an appropriate range of different representatives, leading to a narrow and unrepresentative perspective on the sex trade and its implications for students.
We call on the university to revoke the policy and toolkits and to return to the drawing board – this time centring women’s human right to not be prostituted, dehumanised and objectified, and the sex industry’s role in the promotion of dehumanising, objectifying, and sexist practices and behaviour.
We also call on the ESRC to withdraw funding from the project to roll the policy and toolkits out to other institutions.'
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