Until last week when Iceland managed to paralyse the travel plans of most of the world with one little cloud, we never heard much from that particular country. But it’s a pretty fascinating place and not just because it is home to the woman who wore a dying swan to the Oscars. For starters, did you know that Iceland’s Prime Minister is the world’s only openly lesbian head of state? Or that they’ve just banned strip clubs and are in the process of closing down their sex industry?
It would seem Iceland may be the most female-friendly country on the planet. A shame then that its population is only 320,000 people.
Iceland is fast becoming a world-leader in feminism. …the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.”The Guardian reports….
According to Icelandic police, 100 foreign women travel to the country annually to work in strip clubs. It is unclear whether the women are trafficked, but feminists say it is telling that as the stripping industry has grown, the number of Icelandic women wishing to work in it has not. Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.
So how has Iceland managed it? To start with, it has a strong women’s movement and a high number of female politicans. Almost half the parliamentarians are female and it was ranked fourth out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland and Sweden). All four of these Scandinavian countries have, to some degree, criminalised the purchase of sex (legislation that the UK will adopt on 1 April). “Once you break past the glass ceiling and have more than one third of female politicians,” says Halldórsdóttir, “something changes. Feminist energy seems to permeate everything.”
You can read the full article here…
How fascinating. I particularly like the line where the reporter notes: : “…feminists in Iceland appear to be entirely united in opposition to prostitution, unlike the UK where heated debates rage over whether prostitution and lapdancing are empowering or degrading to women”
What do you think? I think it is naive to believe that prostitutes and strippers are particularly empowered. I don’t know about shutting down those industries but the consenting adults argument becomes a little hard to make when you look at how many women work in the sex industry due to drug addictions and desperate circumstances rather than a go-girl desire to be empowered….
[Thanks Laura…]
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Top Comments
Time and time AND TIME again, it has been proven and documented. Regardless of the legal framework there will be sex workers and there will be clients. You can't 'shut down' the sex industry. New Zealand has a far better model than the Nordics. Stop sticking your heads in the sand. Prohibition doesn't work. Check out this TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/to...
Sex work has nothing to do with men not respecting women. Society as a whole has a responsibility to teach people to respect each other. Think about countries that won't even allow women to show their skin at all in public and tell me if that equals more respect for their women.
Please, just stop trying to save sex workers and listen to us.
While a lot of people seem to be focusing this around individual "rights" and "choices", as illustrated by the decision in Iceland it is a whole lot broader than this. The impacts of the sex industry on society are huge, particularly in terms of women's position in our world and how women are viewed in general. How can women ever achieve true equality when our bodies can be bought, and men can get almost anything if the price is right? We are already seeing the huge ramifications of a society in which women are continually objectified, with 1 in 4 teenage girls reporting they have experienced unwanted sex (a.k.a sexual assault) and around 1 in 5 women experiencing violence from a partner in their lifetime. What happened to their rights and choices? Yes the issues surrounding why women work in this industry are complex, but as Iceland has clearly done let's look at the bigger picture and the effect of the sex industry on women and society as a whole.
The impacts of the football industry on society are huge, particularly in terms of men's position in our world and how men are viewed in general. How can men ever achieve true equality when their bodies can be bought, and they will do any commercial if the price is right and women will objectify them when they do underwear ads. And all we ever hear about is footballers cheating on their wives and getting in fights and the fanatics are hooligans...
Objectification is in every industry. Don't be naive.
Rape culture is an issue that permeates society as a whole - it is not caused by the sex industry.