Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but prostitutes have to register with city and health authorities as well as get regular health checks.

The motion was filed by a representative of the Christian Democratic Party. It argues that allowing prostitution at 16 can result in young women – immigrants in particular – being taken unfair advantage of.

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Until this, CH was the only country in Europe offering legal prostitution below 18.

Meanwhile, the Dutch authorities, who have the reputation of being years ahead of everyone else in their pragmatic approach to prostitution, are working on a law to raise the age limit from 18 to 21. Their logics are that this gives the women concerned a chance to complete their education, learn a trade or acquire other skills that they can come back to making it easier for them to opt out of prostitution at a later point. Sounds very reasonable to me.

Driving back late on Monday I was astonished just how many women were out working - and just how little they are now wearing.

The Swiss system does appear to provide some support, and ensure the health of those people involved in the "industry"

I think it bears mentioning that the context of the above YouTube was the influx of fans during the European Football Championship games that took place over several days in 2008. My understanding is that the prostitution car park was a temporary arrangement.

A related thread is here.

Every girl's dream; go straight from the UNI to the red light....

Sure, why not?

the customers may not only want sex, maybe some enlightenment too

Yep. I'm sure to have some culture shock...
wow.

Maybe the dutch have realized they have a market deficit of intelligent prostitutes. Too many 'customers' come in asking for a general contractor to renovate the basement with a happy ending, and have to leave empty handed.

Well, I guess they did not think of a higher education. The Netherlands have a similar system for the lower tracks of education as here: You go to a middle school till you are 15 or 16 and then typically make an apprenticeship, "Ausbildung" as they call it here. It normally takes three years and does include lessons at schools next to working.

If you want to find work without any professional degree of that level, you are basically screwed (ok, bad analogy in this thread). As a guy, you can do some very basic jobs based on physical labor (carrying the stones to the qualified masons on a building site...). I cannot come up with many jobs for former prostitutes that do not require an Ausbildung.

If you start working as a prostitute at 16, you cannot have finished an education. So you will not find any employement except of prostitution... you basically cannot get out anymore. I therefore think that these plans make very much sense.

BTW: The Netherlands have currently a conservative government, so I would not really rely on "they are all open and ex-hippies" stuff... another plan is to actually ban Marijuana there again.

I read somewhere that the prostitutes in Romania come to your house, clean it, iron your shirts, make you dinner, and then have sex with you.

Perhaps the Swiss version is: Write a business plan, present it, get funding, put together a team, make money, and then have sex with you.

The Romanian version sounds like a very familiar contract... a marriage one.

But some people prefer leasing to buying. You know: The leasing rates are high, but transparent and easier to predict than all those hidden costs of a purchase.

Precisely. Spent years trying to avoid signing on the dotted line myself.

Makes me think of how many students here in Switzerland prostitute themselves during their years at the Uni in one way or another to come to quick money!

I would they are very advanced. McKinsey could name it a good case of horizontal integration in a one-stop-shop strategy that consitutes the main USP in a multiple value adding chain that has as its main objective a low-churn, win-win relationship.

You cannot have a main unique selling point or else it would not be unique

I would guess that Swiss born women only make up a tiny percentage of the 'profession'.

For the legal ones, yes, to some extent. But there's plenty of illegals about, moved from city to city, passport firmly in the hand of their pimps.

And if a prostitute wants out, there are few places for them to go. Women's refuges, by and large, don't want (ex-)prostitutes. This is a problem for them if they're under the threat of violence. While the Netherlands has a pragmatic (and sensible, in my view) approach to prostitution, the authorities are still very concerned about the high levels of criminal activity surrounding even legal prostitution. A friend who was a health worker in Amsterdam has said that the authorities estimate that 1/3 of sex-workers in the city are under some form of duress.

Yes, which is why it's not very high on the agenda of most politicians.