A new iPhone app offers workplace tips for strippers to help them protect themselves against financial exploitation, abuse and a lack of safety.
The “Dancers Information” application and a related website were conceived by researchers after findings from a study of the erotic-dance industry in England and Wales showed that current regulations of nightclubs in the sexual entertainment sector do not automatically address issues of employment status, welfare and security.
Researchers at the University of Leeds surveyed more than 300 women dancers about their working conditions in two separate sets of interviews beginning in 2010-2011, after a new law regulating the sex entertainment industry was introduced in England and Wales in 2009. It was not clear how the law would be implemented, and how it would affect up to 10,000 dancers who researchers said perform in clubs on peak weekend nights.
Most dancers were concerned that their welfare and working conditions were not being taken seriously by the new legislation and that the community’s views were favoured against dancers, the survey showed.
Most respondents had chosen the dancing because they found it a flexible, relatively high-earning, “cash-in-hand” form of work, the report showed. Most dancers didn’t report violence and felt safe in their workplace because of security staff, but verbal harassment and unwanted touching from customers was an issue, the report said. Some women reported being stalked.
