Voice of Holbeck, a coalition of community groups, has today released its ‘Listening Well’ report about local residents’ experiences of the decriminalised red-light area in Holbeck, Leeds. The area is also known as the ‘Managed Zone’ because it is part of the Leeds-wide ‘Managed Approach’ to prostitution, but as one young person who contributed to the report, said: “It is not managed at all, we are approached.” Read More
Another stitch-up for women in Leeds
Far from being a success, the decriminalised red-light zone in Holbeck is a misogynistic sticking plaster over a cancerous lesion of male violence, organised crime, exploitation and female suffering. Read More
PRESS RELEASE: Independent Review into controversial Holbeck red-light zone in Leeds failed to consider equality implications & made claims NOT backed up by data
After pressure from local residents, last year Leeds City Council commissioned a so-called ‘Independent Review’ into the operation of the decriminalised red-light zone in Holbeck, Leeds – officially known as the ‘Managed Approach’. This was undertaken by the University of Huddersfield and their final report was released on Friday, 10 July 2020.
The report claims that the Managed Approach is a significant success. However, the Nordic Model Now! campaign group has identified numerous flaws in the report. Read More
Who says decriminalised red-light districts are safer for women?
A kerb-crawler attempting to pay a woman £10 to hand over her baby shows the Leeds ‘managed prostitution zone’ is a failed experiment. This shouldn’t surprise us because anything that legitimises prostitution implicitly legitimises one-sided sex and the commodification of women. Read More
Minimizing the harms of prostitution
This is the text of a short talk Anna Fisher gave at a Public Policy Exchange event, called “The Future of Sex Work in the UK: Working in Partnership to Support Sex Workers and Minimise Harm,” on Wednesday 19 September 2018.
When the state sanctions prostitution as work, it institutionalises male domination and female suffering, and motivation to address women’s poverty and fix the broken benefits system is lost – because prostitution is institutionalised as welfare for poor women. Read More