For a growing number of vulnerable women such as Alice, a combination of cuts and a ‘blatantly discriminatory’ benefit system is making prostitution the only way to survive
How austerity is forcing disabled women into sex work
For the past five years, Alice has been making a living as a sex worker. She is also disabled; she has bipolar type II, which leads to hypomania, depression and a severe lack of physical energy.
For Alice, these two sides of her life – disability and sex work – are inexorably linked. Alice (not her real name) started this line of work when she was at university – it was a way to make some extra cash to top up her student loan. She had always intended to quit sex work after graduating. “That was three years ago,” she says.
Upon leaving university, she struggled to retain a job. Traditional employment – with a boss and set working hours – proved impossible during depressive episodes and her job came to an end for that reason. She started a postgraduate degree, but her mental health meant she kept missing lectures and the university eventually recommended she take a year off. “I’ve to all intents and purposes [had to] drop out,” she says.
The disability benefit system is supposed to be there to catch people such as Alice; a safety net for when ill health means she cannot have a job to pay the bills. But she is in a catch-22: she cannot claim the out-of-work sickness benefit, employment support allowance (ESA), because she is still registered as a student, despite the fact that her mental health meant she had to leave her course. “On the one hand, I’ve got someone saying: ‘You’re too unwell to study or work.’ On the other, I’ve got [the government] saying: ‘You’re not unwell enough to get support, and go away.’”
On top of this, she was turned down for the other key disability benefit, personal independence payment (PIP). In the middle of a depressive episode, she could not fill in the extensive paperwork. “Ironically, I wasn’t well enough to chase them,” she says. After reapplying and being rejected again, she had to appeal against the decision, which constitutes a mound of paperwork and then a tribunal in court. Besides, Alice worries that mental health problems are rarely seen by the benefit system as being as debilitating as, say, being a wheelchair user. It is a concern backed up by evidence: in 2018, the high court ruled that the PIP system was “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health problems, even going as far as to order the government to review 1.6m disability benefit claims. It all adds up to a situation where Alice could not pay the bills with either a wage or social security. As she put it to me: “I’ve got no income to speak of and the government doesn’t care.”
Instead, she has had to rely on sex work to get by. When I first speak to Alice, she is working. I have accidentally called her early and her client is still in her home. This is an intimate set-up but it generally works for her health. Being her own boss, she has a flexible working pattern and can control the use of her own flat. “When I’m having my down days, I don’t have an employer to answer to, and then, when I’m elated or if I’m actually well, I can sort my own bookings out and organise my own working pattern to cover the days that I can’t work,” she says.
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