What is Women First?

Women First is FiLiA’s project focused on harms caused to women in prostitution. Its purpose is to support local areas to improve their response and assist support staff who work with sex trade survivors.

Women First is a project that started in lockdown. FiLiA noticed news reports from areas that were concerned that during lockdown the sex industry had not stopped; women were still on the streets. The shocking aspect of these reports was that it was not out of concern for the women, or with consideration of what might be happening in their lives to make this necessary, but framed as anti-social behaviour and a threat to the local community.

Whenever we saw one of these reports we wrote to that area and copied in their Community Safety Partnership, Police and Crime Commissioner and lead councillor for violence against women. We suggested that adopting an approach like the equality model, which was evidence-based and proven to make life safer for women would be a more effective way of ending prostitution in their area. We offered to support areas in that change if they were interested.

We were contacted by Plymouth who were interested in improving their response and raising their aspirations for local women involved in the sex industry. We discussed with them how framing prostitution as male violence against women would help them increase the support available for women who wished to exit and provide more options for their recovery.

We were fortunate that within FiLiA we already had a global group of survivors of the sex trade and so asked those women if they would help us design an approach that would be more helpful. They gave their time and expertise and told us about their experiences, what worked and what didn’t, and importantly what they wish had been offered. We gathered more than 100 year’s worth of experience.

From that information we developed Women First, a package of support that we offer to local areas to help them improve their offer to the women involved in the sex industry and their local community. It consists of an audit assessing their current provision, level of expertise across services, and experience of local women. This is then assessed with the support and wisdom of our experts with lived experience and an action plan drawn up to support their improvement. We can also provide training and consultancy,

The project is co-produced with our experts.

Read The Case for Change which describes how the Women First project was developed and how it can help areas improve their response to and aspirations for women involved in the sex industries.

Our Audit Tool details how our audit can assist an area to understand the issues for women in their locality, support specialist staff and provide a bespoke plan for improvement.

FiLiA’s Women First team were proud to submit evidence to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem’s report on prostitution and VAWG, and fully endorse her findings, conclusions and recommendations. Find report #A/HRC/56/48 HERE. It is available in multiple languages.

Supporting Women with the help of our partner You My Sister.

For more information contact sally@filia.org.uk