Sex workers in Belgium will be entitled to receive contributions towards pensions from brothel owners and other benefits such as maternity leave under labour laws due to come into force in the coming months. You can spot the shop fronts of former brothels in Brussels by the large floor-to-ceiling windows. As areas became gentrified and some authorities started to crack down — or as the trade began to move online — many shut and now host trendy cafes and restaurants.
Some of the businesses have less discreet names than others. Club Virgin and Touch and Go stand out. Historically, the response to sex work by Belgian authorities was usually one of toleration. While the act itself was never criminalised, soliciting clients on the street, leasing a premises to a sex worker or directly running a brothel was illegal until The Belgian parliament went a step further at the start of this month when it passed a labour law that has been described as the first of its kind.
The legislation will allow sex workers to enter into recognised employment contracts, giving them access to benefits such as health insurance, holidays, maternity leave and unemployment supports if they quit or are laid off. The law gives sex workers the right to refuse clients and decline to perform certain acts, as well as stopping at any point. The parliament also introduced a ban on people running official brothels if they have been convicted of serious crimes.
Utsopi, a trade union for sex workers in Belgium which lobbied for the law, has its offices on one end of the Brussels red light district. When I dropped by earlier this week many of the windows along the street were empty, but that was probably to be expected given it was a Monday morning.
Daan Bauwens, a policy officer with the organisation, said while the sex work sector was traditionally allowed to operate in plain view, that still varies between postcodes. The red light district in Brussels is split between two local councils. Sex work was banned during the Covid pandemic under public health laws, and afterwards there was a push at national level to regulate the sector.
