On this page: Our Work | Our Objectives
Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, is the national peak body for sex workers and sex worker organisations in unceded Australia.
Through our objectives, policies, and programs, we work to advance sex worker rights through equality and social, legal, political, cultural, health and economic justice for past and present workers in the sex industry. We work to enable sex workers to be self-determining agents, build our own alliances, and choose where and how we live and work.
Our membership is made up of sex worker organisations and individual sex workers across Australia.
Scarlet Alliance is a peer organisation, all our staff and Committee members are past or current sex workers. We take pride in our work being done by sex workers, for sex workers.
Our purposes
- advance the health of past and present sex workers
- promote and protect the human rights of past and present sex workers
- promote respect for sex workers and end all forms of discrimination against sex workers
Our work
Our work spans a wide range of activities, and is driven by our Strategic Plan and the needs of our members. We conduct funded, unfunded and fee-for-service work across a few key areas:
2018 Scarlet Alliance National Forum on Kaurna Country (Brisbane)
Community development
- We provide a connection point for members of the sex worker community through various channels.
- We gather sex workers and sex worker organisations from across so-called Australia for our annual National Forum.
- We engage sex workers at all levels of our association.
- We convene Migrant Sex Worker and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sex Worker Advisory Groups, and engage representatives from different parts of the sex worker community.
- We empower sex workers through peer information-sharing, peer support, skill-sharing, and by fostering connections between our individual and organisational members and the sex worker community at large.
Peer education
- We provide a national sex worker peer educator training program (SANTAP), benchmarking best practices in sex worker peer education.
- Our Red Book Online is a comprehensive guide to sex worker health, providing clinically-reviewed sexual health information, sex worker-friendly testing options, and information on sex worker skills to support sex workers to make the right workplace health and safety decisions for us.
- We create and update a range of resources for sex workers to navigate state and territory sex work laws, industrial rights, migration, taxation, discrimination, developing our sex work skills, and more.
Our member SIN's safer sex shop on Karuna land - your one-stop shop for peer education, safer sex supplies, and sex work-positive t-shirts.
CEO Jules Kim speaking on the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Panel on HIV, Decriminalisation and Human Rights, Geneva 2019
Advocacy
- We collaborate with our members to participate in law and policy reform on state, territory, federal, and local government levels.
- We engage and consult with our members to develop and communicate best-practice policy positioning on any and all issues that impact sex workers.
- We build coalitions with our allies and other marginalised groups and communities to strengthen our advocacy.
- We and our members conduct training with organisations seeking to improve their service delivery to sex workers.
- We work tirelessly to address sex work stigma, ensuring that all sex workers receive the maximum benefit from our work for change and that no sex worker is left behind.
Representation
- We represent sex workers in media, at events, in academic spaces, and anywhere a national sex worker peer voice is required.
- We represent on a range of government advisory bodies, including the National Roundtable on Human Trafficking and Slavery and the national Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections Standing Committee.
- We represent sex workers in the BBV and STI sector through our membership in the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO).
- We provide advice and support so that sex workers are empowered to participate meaningfully in research that benefits the sex worker community.
CEO Jules Kim speaking on the Sex Work & Feminism Panel at the 2021 Sydney Opera House All About Women Festival
Our objectives
Our constitution declares the following objectives, which each member of Scarlet Alliance agrees to uphold. Scarlet Alliance’s principal activity is health promotion for sex workers by, without limitation:
- Working to guarantee the right of all sex workers to optimum occupational health and safety, including general health knowledge and safe work practices
- Actively promoting the right of all sex workers to work in whatever area of their chosen occupation, including street, brothel, escort, private, and opportunistic work
- Enhancing the capacity of sex workers to be politically active, advance their rights, and build networks and organisations
- Playing an active role in Unceded Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS, blood borne viruses, and sexually transmitted infections, including peer education and harm reduction strategies for sex workers
- Disseminating sex industry-related information
- Providing training and education on issues relating to the Australian sex industry and the migration of sex workers into so-called Australia
- Lobbying for supportive legal, policy, and administrative frameworks which do not discriminate against sex workers
- Challenging any government, legislation, regulations, rules, policies, processes, or law enforcement practices which are discriminatory, repressive, or fail to promote the rights and autonomy of sex workers
- Eradicating sex worker stereotypes and stigmatisation in the sex work community as well as the broader community
- Communicating the diversity of ideas, opinions, and aspirations of past and present sex workers
- Collaborating with international and local Sex Worker Rights groups that align with the Aims and Objectives of Scarlet Alliance