Visiting Switzerland

For some time now in Switzerland, sex workers and prostitutes working in the streets or in massage parlors and salons have noticed that clients invariably haggle over the price of sexual services – and to an increasingly aggressive degree.

With the integration of Switzerland into the European Union through the bilateral accords and the influx of foreign sex workers, supply has outstripped demand and clients are discovering that commercial sex in Switzerland is becoming cheaper by the day.

In the French part of Switzerland – Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchatel, Yverdon, and parts of the Valais and Fribourg— the prices of sexual services are practically in free-fall.

The reason is simple: there’s more and more product on offer. It’s only natural that faced with so many choices, customers are bargaining down the prices. The fire-sale on sex services does not include luxury escorts. Luxury escorts have withstood the downward spiral in prices much as luxury real-estate has withstood the subprime property meltdown.

Some nasty wags have claimed that the ranks of prostitutes in Switzerland have been swelled by Norwegians and Swedes – Following Sweden, Norway has recently decided to jail the johns, criminalizing the purchase of sex in an excess of feminist righteousness.

Criminologists in Switzerland say that the Swiss market is now saturated with prostitutes. In Ticino hundreds of professional sex workers were interviewed in the context of a study done in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Center for Sex Research in Genoa. The big problem (for the prostitutes) is that sex workers can hold up their prices. Previously, one could more or less anything for roughly CHF 300. Now, girls will do anything for CHF 100. As one socio-economically conscious researcher put it, “When one can purchase a sodomy for less than CHF 100, it’s a serious problem.” His statement appeared to be not a moral judgment but rather a a pronouncement on the social justice of financial compensation.

Prostitutes in the parlors and on the street admin that already for quite some time working conditions have changed. They have become much harder, as they have in most other professions. Clients are more demanding and want everything at cheaper and cheaper prices.

According to one streetwalker interviewed at random, “If you’re unwilling to do some things, you don’t earn very much.” This particular young lady claims she charges CHF 100 for ‘full sex’ and CHF 200 for sodomy. She claims she refuses clients who want sex with out a condom.

According to recent studies and survey, 8 out of 10 clients of sex workers want unprotected sex. And 7 out of 10 accept if the price is right.

The explosion in the number of prostitutes working in Switzerand is partly a result of sex workers without working papers. The number of sex workers in Switzerland is estimated to be roughly 20,000, of which 50% are clandestine. For example in the canton of Vaud, police say out about 400 prostitutes 200 are illegal. But there is also a strong rise in the number of prostitutes working legally, a result of the bilateral agreements which allow the 300,000,000 citizens of the European Union to work in Switzerland, a tiny country with a population of only slightly more than 7,000,000 and now over-served in the area of sexual services. Many of the prostitutes in Geneva are French, Spanish, or Portuguese, but others are from the four corners of the world.

According to a young Senegalese woman who sells her charms in a massage parlor in Sion, “I thought I’d earn more here than elsewhere but it’s not true. There are days when there’s no work at all.”

Many people wonder, ‘how much does a prostitute earn?’

It’s difficult to know because they rarely file tax returns (even though in Switzerland prostitution is legal and prostitutes are required to pay taxes like everyone else) ands since prostitutes work in hotels, massage parlors, and in the street and each sex worker fixes her own price. In addition, their work is irregular. What is certain is that business is no longer as hot as it once was.

In a massage parlor in Prilly near Lausanne, Cecilia says “sometimes I make 2000 a month, sometimes a lot more – but there are days when there are no clients.” The young girl hands over 100 francs per day to the parlor boss and keeps all her earnings. In spite of that, she says that her financial situation is precarious. “2000 francs is not much – but luckily I’m married.”

In Geneva there are 600 registered prostitutes working in the street or in parlors or as ‘independents.’ ‘Registered’ means they file tax returns and the tax office reports that the majority declare between CHF 30,000 and CHF 60,000 of revenue. Taking as average CHF 45,000, one arrives at the estimate that prostitutes bring in about CHF 4 million in tax revenue out of the CHF 3.2 billion annually. (Registered prostitutes who do not file a declaration are automatically taxed as if they had earned CHF 45,000.)

In Lausanne, in the Sévelin neighborhood, just a few meters from the Docks, prostitutes of all shapes and nationalities work the streets. With all the competition, the price of a oral sex has dropped as low as CHF 30. The economy of sex work in Switzerland is following the general trend of bottoming prices for sex workers across Europe. It’s a far cry from the times of the Countess of Polignac, who in the 18th century obtained a chateau for herself in the Loire as recompense for a highly accomplished blowjob.