With little warning the Taipei City Government moved to ban the legalized sex trade eight years ago. Each of the capital's 128 official sex workers was promised a NT$7,750 stipend per annum for the two years following the ban and another payment of NT$7,750 for each immediate family member aged either under 18, or above 65 -- provided there were no other relatives that could offer care.
The first series of social protests by sex workers in Taiwan's history erupted almost immediately. After 19 months of fierce argument the government handed the sex workers a two-year reprieve. During that time, the city initiated a social assistance program to help the prostitutes find alternative employment.
Financial help came in the form of a monthly allowance of NT$15,000 for the two-year grace period, or a NT$600,000 loan to set up a small business.
In 2001, the ban on licensed prostitution went into effect and government agencies withdrew the social assistance programs and the funding that were aiding the workers' transition to new jobs. The prostitutes lost their "special status," and were treated as ordinary labors who had to compete for limited government resources to support their families.
Sixty percent of the prostitutes went underground selling their services illicitly, 20 percent were forced into retirement and another 20 percent now struggle to make a meager living on the margins of society, according to statistics from the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) (日日春關懷互助協會).
COSWAS is the only grassroots group that has been involved with the sex workers from the beginning of the ban. Commissioned by the city's Bureau of Labor Affairs between 1999 to 2000, the group began by founding assistance programs for the prostitutes who wanted to find legitimate jobs. One year later, the funding stopped. But COSWAS has continued providing services and has, with its limited resources, set up small businesses together with several former sex workers.
The group has worked with many of the former prostitutes who struggled to make a living by running small shops or nightmarket stands. Most of the ventures failed.
Insurmountable barriers
Why is it so hard for the former sex workers to start afresh? Putting moral issues aside, these former prostitutes are a group of unskilled, middle-aged women whose work was effectively ended by the government and who were then forced to enter the job market during a time of lackluster economic growth.
Zhong jun-zhu (鍾君竺), executive director of COSWAS, has dealt with the former sex workers since he finished college and understands only too well the difficulties faced by these women.
"When the policy [of banning legalized prostitution] came out in 1997, the average age of those women was 40, and most of them had only graduated from elementary school. Most of them can't read or write, or don't know how to do the simplest math problem. Take making a Xerox copy for example, we have to teach them over and over again so they can understand how the machine works," she said. "You just can't image how many basic skills they lack, even for simple tasks. I wouldn't have any problem if the government had well-planned job training programs and career counseling for these women. But the former prostitutes were cut off from the only work they knew how to do and are now pretty much on their own," Zhong added.
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