More than 3000 people have signed a petition delivered to parliament today in a bid to get prostitution seen as a “form of exploitation that subverts the social state and rights of all women”.
The Democratic Movement of Women, the O Ninho Association and the Portuguese Platform for Women’s Rights want prostitution viewed “not as work” but as a form of violence that affects both women and children.
The petition followed an announcement by Lisbon council that it was creating a platform for the sex work sector.
The various groups involved have asked for the platform’s to change its terms of reference, and be instead an instrument of “intervention in the area of prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation and people trafficking”.
The desire is to remove the words “sex work” and/ or “sex worker” from the remit.
Says Diário de Noticias, the hopes are for a platform that would work to protect women in prostitution and invest in programmes that would help them back into society, “with access to habitation, education, professional training, health and social protection”.
