Sex Workers of the World Unite! How Striking French Sex Workers Inspired a Global Labour Movement (The Conversation)

Read the full article by Eurydice Aroney at TheConversation.com

It is a little-known fact that New South Wales was the first government in the world to remove all prostitution laws from the criminal law books in 1995. Since then NSW and New Zealand remain the only two places in the world to have maintained a fully decriminalised sex industry.

Even less well known is the story of the eight-day nationwide strike by French sex workers in 1975. They inspired not just the Australian sex workers who agitated for change in their own country, but sex workers around the world. The strike began when sex workers took refuge in a church with the support of one of the most powerful institutions in France – the Catholic Church. As pointed out by Father Louis Blanc, the priest in charge at St Nizier when the strike took place:

It is, after all, Mary Magdalene to whom Jesus appeared.

Hundreds of sex workers occupied a total of five French churches during the strike. Many more of the approximately 20,000 French sex workers nationwide “downed tools” in solidarity. Eurydice Aroney is the producer of The Sex Workers Revolt commissioned by ABC Radio with funding from the University of Technology Sydney. She is a member of Scarlet Alliance, Australia's national sex worker organization body.