Sex industry ‘infiltrates’ the workplace
By politics.co.uk staff
The sex industry has ‘infiltrated’ the workplace due to the prevalence of lap dancing clubs to entertain clients, a leading women’s rights group has said.
The Fawcett Society also cited employees’ exposure to pornography as “rife”.
Forty-one per cent of UK lapdancing clubs directly target employers, according to the group, and many provide “discrete receipts” so employees can claim the money spent in the clubs on expenses.
Meanwhile, ‘lads’ mags’, which usually contain images of scantily clad or naked women, were available for sale in over 50,000 workplaces.
Kat Banyard, campaigns officer at the Fawcett Society, said: “Despite relative silence on the issue within employer circles, our research shows that the sex industry is a major threat to women’s equality at work.
“For too long, employers have engaged with the sex industry without due regard for the impact on female employees, and have failed to prevent the illicit use of the sex industry by employees in a work context. But this is an issue that employers cannot afford to ignore.”
A fifth of men questioned said they had accessed pornography at work, the group said.
The report, ‘Corporate Sexism: the sex industry’s infiltration of the modern workplace’, is being launched today with a speech by equality minister Harriet Harman.
