Queen Elizabeth Honors Activist Who Fought To Decriminalize Prostitution

In 1980s Catherine Healy was a young school teacher who liked to travel and made an unconventional choice to help fund her adventures — one she told the New Zealand Herald drove her mother to tears. She left the classroom for the bedroom, or more accurately an illegal brothel.

In the process, Healy said she went from earning about $400 a week as an educator to a whopping $2000 a week as a sex worker, which made it easier to pay for her trips abroad.

But she described other changes too. She was no longer entitled to any worker-rights protections and she was suddenly faced with the constant threat of being arrested. It was a shock after spending time within a safe and unionized profession.

"We were spoken about as young sex workers in a disrespectful way," she told the BBC. "We needed to find our voice and we needed to be understood."

More