Germany’s Prostitutes May Get Social Benefits

The airy and inviting offices of Hydra display much the same self-help material as any other professional counseling center in Berlin: financial advice, legal seminars, fitness tips and retraining for those who want to start a new life.

In a few months, Hydra--a networking center for prostitutes--may also have applications for state health insurance and pensions, because the leftist government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has decided it’s high time to acknowledge that those in the world’s oldest profession have as much need for social security blankets as do secretaries and welders.

Families Minister Christine Bergmann has announced the government’s intention to push through a sweeping reform of laws regarding prostitution, which isn’t illegal in Germany but is still caught up in anachronistic legislation and local mores in a country where support is broad for extending benefits to its practitioners.

The proposals Bergmann expects to put before a parliamentary vote by spring include striking the word sittenwidrig--immoral--from the legal definition of sexual transactions, which prevents prostitutes from applying for social security.

Supporters also want to allow purveyors of the flesh trade to set up brothels as legitimate, taxpaying businesses. Other changes being discussed would eliminate prostitution-free zones proclaimed in many towns and cities, as well as ease restrictions on advertising and solicitation.

“Removing the ‘immoral’ definition won’t solve all of our problems, but it is an important step toward normalization,” says Friederike Strack, an advisor at Hydra who estimates that as many as 500,000 prostitutes ply their trade in Germany, which has a population of 82 million. “There will still be problems with neighbors and other social injustices, but full decriminalization would help get rid of the stigma.”

Prostitutes in the Netherlands already enjoy many of the social protections now being discussed in Germany, but few other European countries have taken up the cause of social justice for a segment of the population long relegated to the fringes. In fact, liberal Sweden earlier this year recriminalized prostitution after a longtime policy of tolerance and made those soliciting sex for money liable to hefty fines.

The Social Democrats and Greens now in control of Germany’s 669-seat Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, which has the power to amend the federal legal code, have tried for years to revise laws that deny prostitutes equal access to social assistance. But the leftists were unsuccessful because the conservative Christian Democrats were in power until a year ago.

“As well as a change in government, there has been a change in social attitudes, and this should be helpful because it shows that the majority is behind fair treatment for these women,” says Renate Augstein, who is responsible for women’s issues at the Families Ministry.

A recent survey by the dimap public opinion research institute found 68% of respondents supportive of Bergmann’s call for abolishing the barriers to social insurance coverage for prostitutes.

Every day in Germany, 1.2 million men pay for sex, spending 12.5 billion marks, or nearly $7 billion annually, the weekly magazine Stern reported without citing sources. It also claimed that 18% of all German males older than 15 seek the services of prostitutes on a regular basis.

Currently, even those prostitutes who pay taxes on their income in licensed and heavily regulated brothels cannot qualify for state-financed health insurance or retirement benefits because legislation defines their work as socially destructive or inclined to expose them to disease.

Politicians who back the proposed liberalization dismiss those conditions--and the opposition figures unwilling to change them--as being out of touch with reality.

“There has always been and will always be prostitution. It’s a business like any other contractual service and shouldn’t be singled out for special regulation,” says Christina Schenk, a Bundestag member from eastern Berlin with the reformed Communist faction, the Party of Democratic Socialism. “The claim that prostitutes are more susceptible to disease is rubbish. Their bodies are their working capital, and they are keenly interested to keep themselves healthy.”

Although the Social Democrats and the Greens command enough votes in the Bundestag to push through their reforms, working out a compromise on the nuances and seeking consensus with sympathetic conservatives will take a few months, say the proponents. A legislative working group is expected to take until December or January to define all the legal clauses that bar prostitutes from social insurance, and an additional month or so may be needed, they say, to get the bill scheduled for parliamentary debate.

“There is actually support for these changes across the political spectrum. Even some members of the Christian Democrats recognize the current situation as fundamentally unjust,” says Irmingard Schewe-Gerek, the Greens legislator overseeing women’s issues.

Still, many from the right are adamantly opposed to equal rights and to social insurance for prostitutes, on economic as well as moral grounds.

“One can’t make moral reforms by legalizing immoral business,” says Norbert Geis, a Christian Democrat and staunch opponent of Bergmann’s initiatives. “I can’t imagine that employers and employees in legitimate lines of work are going to be willing to pay more for their health insurance so that those engaging in destructive behavior can have the same benefits.”

But those swimming against the social current lack the legislative clout to halt the impending legal changes and are likely to be provided only the opportunity to vent their views in front of fellow lawmakers and TV cameras before what are now only intentions become laws.