Full decriminalisation of prostitution will be a step in the wrong direction as it will reinforce existing stereotypes and portray women as being objects for men’s gratification, parliament's social affairs committee was told on Wednesday.
Maria Tereza Gatt, speaking on behalf of the Equality Association, warned that full decriminalisation would only serve to satisfy the 3% of prostitutes who do this activity consciously, as the rest are forced into it by circumstances.
Full decriminalisation applies to people involved in prostitution and their clients whereas 'part' decriminalisation applies only to the former.
In a detailed presentation, Gatt outlined the New Zealand model in the wake of comments in the previous sitting - by those calling for full decriminalisation - that this should be the direction which Malta had to follow.
Introduced in 2003 the reform in New Zealand was aimed to safeguard sex workers by placing them on par with other jobs, in terms of their rights. Though this was a good move in principle, its implementation was the complete opposite, Gatt said.
“Even the term sex worker is wrong, as their job is not in line with the definition of the International Labour Organisation, which describes productive work as that being carried out in liberty, equity, security and human dignity,” she remarked.
She also warned that legalisation heralded the introduction of “all inclusive” services whereby clients would pay a premium to do what they wanted.
“This has resulted in prostitutes being abused as they could not refuse doing some acts,” she warned.
Moreover, she added, incidents of unprotected sex continued while prostitutes were being threatened by their pimp against reporting any abuse to the police for fear of putting off clients.
“This reform will only serve to turn pimps into entrepreneurs and drive prostitution underground as they would under-declare operations for tax evasion purposes,” she said.
Questions were also raised during Wednesday's meeting on the assurance given in the previous sitting by Parliamentary Secretary Rosianne Cutajar that the government had no plans to legalise brothels under this reform.
Romina Gatt Lopez, a researcher and part of the management team at Dar Hosea which offers support to prostitutes, asked where prostitutes would work from if not from brothels.
She also expressed concern that from a gender perspective, decriminalisation would only serve to reinforce existing inequalities and turn women into commodities.
Josann Cutajar, from the department of gender and sexualities within the faculty for social wellbeing at the University of Malta, warned that decriminalizing prostitution would turn the country to a sex hub, just like colonial times.
She pointed out that some time ago the university received a lot of applications from Russian students who never turned up, as in reality their objective was to come to Malta to work as prostitutes.
The academic also warned that prostitutes were also being exposed to physical harm due to being involved in multiple sexual encounters per day.