The regulatory dance: sexual consumption
and the night time economy
International Labour Process Conference, The University of Leeds,
April 2011
Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy
School of Sociology and Social Policy
The University of Leeds
Structure of paper
 Analysis of dancers’ surveys and interviews
 Regulators and club workers in final report
 Overarching findings from survey
 Three key conclusions
 Policy implications
 Recommendations
Previous research on lap dancing
 Focus on micro politics
 Gendered power between client
and dancer
 ‘Objectification’ debates: wider
social impact
 Detracts attention from key issues
around labour process and labour
issues
Background to study
 Expansion/rise of lap dancing
 ‘Mainstreaming’
 Object
 Policing and Crime Act 2010
 Moral concern: no space for
working conditions
Methods: survey
 12 month project
 197 questionnaires
 Recruited through: clubs, peers, internet
 Questioned about four clubs they’d worked in
 Questions: motivations / journey into lap dancing; other
forms of work; education; feelings about work; earnings;
fines; fees; demographics; unions; tax
Methods: interviews and observation
 Interviews:
 35 dancers
 15 regulators
 20 industry (managers, owners, bar staff, doormen)
 Observations:
 20 clubs across the UK
 Licensing Committees; Hackney Dancers’ Alliance; TUC
Methods: visual - photography
 In partnership with Liz Lock
 Two photoshoots with three dancers
 Lap dancing club and strip pub
 Participants described the photos, relating them to their
experiences
 Not for sensationalisation / voyeurism, but to add another
dimension to understandings of workplaces
 More ‘sociologically comprehensible’ (Harper 2004)
Mobility
 Reflected
broad base of
data
 Also
indicated very
high levels of
geographical
mobility
amongst
dancers
“
I’ve worked in two in Leicester. I’ve worked
in Peterborough, in Stoke, in Manchester,
in Leeds, and I’ve worked in two in
Manchester. I’ve worked in Marbella, where
else? I’ve worked in Northampton. I’m just
trying to think… then I’ve worked in
Harrogate. I tried Blackpool the other
weekend. Terrible, absolutely awful! I think
I’d say over 10 clubs I’ve worked in…
”
Findings: media reporting
Findings: socio-demographics
 Relatively young
 60% (n=105) aged 22-29
 93.2%(n=151) started dancing under 29
 Single, non-mothers
 only 30.3% were living ‘as married’
 large majority did not have any children (82.9%, n=141)
Majority British
- 60.5% British; 28.6% EU; 9.6% non-EU
- Main migrant groups: Romanian / Brazilian
Findings: education and
employment
-Educational Background
73.4% had completed further
education
 23.2% had Undergraduate
degree
 Similar across nationalities
 Fewer than national average
of young women (40%)
Other employment
Few women gave up high
paying jobs / careers to dance
Most were already in low paid
and unskilled work (hospitality;
retail; beauty etc.)
 21.4% said they started
dancing ‘because they wanted to
become a dancer’
Findings: lap dancing and life
strategies
Education
Other forms of work
Other forms of work and education
Only dancing
Only
dancing
(40.2%)
Other forms
of work and
education
(10.6%)
Education
(14.2%)
Other
forms of
work
(32.6%)
Findings: direct sexual services
 No evidence or anecdotes of forced labour / trafficking
 ‘Extra services’ anecdotal by several dancers (1 said she did)
as individual entrepreneurship and where managers ignored
rule breaking.
 Pressure to do extras came from ‘race to the bottom’ and not
management pressure
 Although managers sometimes turned a blind eye
 No evidence of connections to organised prostitution
 Does reflect largely the clubs we had access to…
Findings: customer harassment
High levels of verbal harassment reported
 Few women said they had not experienced verbal
harassment from customers
Interview data describes unwanted touching and pestering
as a frequent behaviour
Dancers had strategies
In disputes with customers, 85% said they were mostly or
always supported by managers
Findings: temporalities of lap
dancing
Patterns and routine
 First job: 41% introduced to
by a female friend
 Second job: word of mouth
 Time in dancing: less than 5
months to over 15 years.
 Most (62%) worked between
3-5 shifts per week
 6+ shifts usually migrant
workers
The five year myth
 70.9% had been dancing for
less than 5 years
 Some talked about working for
only 5 years to achieve goals, but
then getting used to the money
and lifestyle
 Few said this would be a career
for forseeable future.
Findings: feelings about work
 High levels of job satisfaction (74%
scored 7-10)
 80% felt safe in their workplace
 Doormen, rather than CCTV
 Respect at work:
• 44% said they felt respected
• 8% that felt disrespected
Findings: swings and roundabouts
Advantages
Ability to choose hours - 87.6%
 Get money straight away - 81.8%
 Earn more money - 80.3%
 Be independent - 76.6%
 Combines fun and work - 72.5%

Disadvantages
Unstable earning - 59.1%
 Keeping job a secret - 47.4%
 Customer harassment - 40.1%
 Lost respect for men - 30.7%
 Competition with others - 27.7%

Findings: money and earnings
House fees:
 Ranged £0-£200
 Usually £20-30
Average earnings per shift:
 1st club =£284,
 Current club = £232.
Commission on private
dances:
 Ranged 0-66%
 Average: 30%
Fines:
 61% of dancers had been
fined.
Tipping System:
50% reported tipping other
workers
Losing money:
 70% reported losing money
by going to work
Findings: money and earnings
“
It’s £20 for a dance, because you pay a flat
house fee. This is the thing, the commission
structure will vary and affect how the club is
with you and how you all make your money. I
worked in a club recently where the owner
took a third, which is a lot of money out of the
dance fee. Whereas other places where there
is a flat house fee are o.k. Clubs where they
take a percentage commission, the owners are
quite involved, they will encourage you and
support you and the will try and make it more
fair.
”
Findings: The Rules
Touching
License with conditions
Dancers own interpretation
and confusion about rules
Variability between
clubs/pubs
Customers confused
No contact lead to
harassment?
Codes of Conduct
Made to sign
Confused as a contract
Management discipline.
Lateness/absence/dress
Arbitrarily enforced
Variability
Problem of localising
policy….no consistency
Explaining the proliferation of lap
dancing: key conclusions
 Precarity and life strategies
 The ‘myth of self employment’
 The economics of the industry
1. Intersectional precarities
 Dancing as a strategy for young single women
 Intersects with education, debt, other work, further career /
future plans
 Working towards stability/security in career and life
 Migrant workers actively come to dance as a strategy (not
multi-faceted strategy)
1. Intersectional precarities
 Relates to precarious situation of those in education (likely
to increase)
 Levels of insecurity in formal labour market
Contradiction: precarity not ‘always and already’ negative:
wider political economy and institutional arrangements
Precarious work as a short term strategy for avoiding and
managing longer term conditions of precarity
1. From anti-work to strategy
“
I went to private school and one of the things that our
headmaster said was people learn from their mistakes. But
intelligent people learn from other people’s mistakes. And in a
way seeing sort of a few of us older – sort of – you know, who are
approaching 40 and still have nothing apart from the designer
shoe collection sort of kind of forced me to think, you know what;
look at the other dancers that were, you know, saving their
money, that were coming in, that were on the floor at nine
o’clock and were working hard, not drinking. And were tucking
their money away to buy a house the following year – Those are
the people that I wanted to learn from.
”
2. The myth of self-employment

Core reason women worked in the
industry (after money) was flexibility
and self employment

Whose flexibility?

Disciplinary measures

Control with management

Compound precariousness
2. Myth of self-employment: control
and discipline
“
Management come and they say, "do this, do that", but
we're self-employed, so they shouldn't be able to. Also,
what we wear. We should be allowed to wear what we
want, we're self-employed.
”
3. Economics of lap dancing: macrofactors
 Colosi – historical context of rise: change from exclusive to
mass market
 Gentrification
 Diversification
 Consumption
 Enabling NTE
 Privatisation of education
 Growing disparities of wealth
3. Economics of lap dancing: microfactors

Supply base
Devaluation
of the job – price, accessibility, cater for
different markets
From
‘fit and fit’ to deskilling
Disadvantages:
Opportunity
financial exploitation don’t put women off
for one big spender
Declining standards
“
Some of them charge extortionate amounts of money to the
dancers who are there to work. This is one of the reasons
that the industry has gone downhill in the last few years.
More fee money means that the clubs want more dancers
per shift. Some very small places have up to thirty girls per
shift. As there is a lot of competition amongst the girls, there
doesn't seem to be a good atmosphere between them
anymore. I would not go back to dancing because of these
reasons. I have seen how the industry has deteriorated
gradually over time.
”
Policy implications
 Welfare of
dancers as priority
amidst other
licensing priorities
 Nil Policy
 Concerns that
stripping will
become
deprofessionalised
and dangerous
(Colosi 2010).
“
There needs to be more regulation within the
industry, we as dancers have for too long
allowed others to dictate to us how we are to
perform and interact. What we do is not illegal
yet is still seen as a fringe job lacking in
respectability and a gateway to prostitution.
The industry is now being scapegoated because
the real issues that affect vulnerable women like
sex trafficking, arranged marriage and forced
prostitution are unpopular politically.
”
The end…
… thank you.