Health and Wellbeing
Sex workers' health and wellbeing depends on more than individual choices. It relies on access to affirming sexual and reproductive healthcare, mental health support, and safe working conditions - all shaped by legal frameworks, policy responses and social attitudes. Sex workers are experts in our own health, and have been leaders peer education and public health promotion in Australia since the 1970s. But structural barriers still stand between us and the non-judgemental care we need.
Barriers to healthcare.
Sex workers face high levels of stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings when we disclose our work, resulting in negative treatment or inappropriate care. Fear of police, privacy risks and laws that criminalise sex workers for having a sexually transmitted infection (STI) or blood-borne virus (BBV) discourage many of us from using health services at all.
Many clinicians lack training on sex worker health, leading to wrong assumptions about risk, poor advice and care. Mandatory testing regimes and criminal laws wrongly assume we won’t look after our own health unless threatened with punishment. A 2018 global study found that sex work criminalisation and repressive policing doubled the risk of HIV and STI, and significantly increased the likelihood of sex workers experiencing violence from clients and others. Migrant sex workers face additional barriers, as many confidential and accessible services are only available to those eligible for Medicare.
These are dot points:
- These barriers have real consequences.
- Fear of disclosure pushes many of us toward multiple, disconnected services, creating gaps in medical history and missed opportunities for holistic care.
- Sexual and reproductive health is workplace health and safety for sex workers.
- Bodily autonomy over contraception, pregnancy, abortion and fertility decisions is a right, not a privilege granted on the condition of good behaviour.
This is text after a dot point.
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