LONDON—Despite a recession that continues to wreak havoc throughout Europe, government-run employment centers in the United Kingdom will henceforth be barred from advertising for jobs in the adult entertainment industry that involve "sexual stimulation." The new policy was announced Monday by Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling, who noted his discomfort with women feeling pressure frmo the government to take such positions.
"When I first spotted this problem a couple of years ago and looked through job center websites … I found numerous adverts for pole dancers, for lap dancers, for webcam operators,” Grayling told the BBC. “Since then, there’s been a public consultation, and the general view that has come back to the department is that most people feel this is a bad thing. I feel very strongly that we as a government want people to get off of unemployment and back to work; there’s going to be a lot of effort to get people into jobs. But I don’t want any woman who goes to a job center to feel that … if there’s an adult vacancy there … that they have to apply for that. I think it is better that those adverts just don’t happen in job centers at all.”
This is not the first time the government has tried to ban all “adult” adverts. In 2003, it attempted to ban all such adverts but lost in court when challenged by the lingerie firm Ann Summers. To preclude anything of the sort happening again, the new ban covers only jobs that include the "sexual stimulation of others.”
While Graying expressed his concern that women not be put under any pressure to take adult entertainment jobs, he failed to acknowledge that men are possible fodder for such positions, too.
