Prostitution as Profession
Histories of ‘Work-Shy’ Labour in a Welfare State, West Germany between 1949 and 1974
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7150837 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Annalisa Martins (0000-0002-8604-5677, Chair of Modern History, University of Greifswald, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 595-612 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary European History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0960-7773 • E-ISSN: 1469-2171 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0960777325000013 |
| OpenAlex | W4409898483 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
In West German law, selling sex was held to be legal but ‘immoral’, a definition that prevented its recognition or protection as a profession. Despite this categorisation, however, women (and men) sold sex in streets, bars and backrooms across the country. They developed routines and relationships to manage their trade, while being excluded from many welfare state provisions and targeted by local police, health or welfare departments. Rising prosperity and the loosening of social norms in West Germany between 1949 and 1974 provide the backdrop to an exploration of how older notions of prostitution as ‘work-shy’ were confronted with the changing circumstances of urban commercial sex in this period. The article examines how politicians, police and welfare workers interpreted the continued existence of commercial sex in the context of rising security. It also highlights the disparate working practices of women who sold sex across the period
Demographic economics · Economics · Labour economics · Political science · Welfare · Welfare state · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Engineering · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Law
Cast Out
The Miracle Years
Die Reglementierung von Prostitution in Deutschland
Queer Lives across the Wall
The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria
Bahnhof Boys
Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights
Asoziale« und »Berufsverbrecher« in den Konzentrationslagern 1933 bis 1938
Sex with a Purpose
Selling Sex in the Reich
Weimar through the Lens of Gender
The Devil's Chain
Das KZ-Bordell
Die patriarchale Familie als „Keimzelle“ der Demokratie – oder deren größte Bedrohung
Prostitution and Victorian Society
Prostitution as non-labour leading to forced labour. Vagrancy and Gender in Sweden and Stockholm, 1919–1939
Tensions of abolitionism during the negotiation of the 1949 ‘Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others’
Incarceration as welfare
The German Underworld
Rewriting German History
The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin
Assembly Line of Joys”
Wartime Relations
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |