Mariska Majoor
[5]: 13:04 She said In 1994, she recounted that she had 'had an awful lot of fun, and also experienced some very unpleasant things', especially regarding social stigma and poor working conditions because it was still an illegal profession.
[8][5]: 10:40 With each trainee, Majoor first conducted an intake interview to ask why she or he wanted to do sex work and whether it was a good reason or not; besides earning money, the person must also like the job.
[5]: 8:08 She found it important to make a conscious choice for the profession and not end up there from a problematic situation, such as debts or drug addiction.
There were both positive and negative responses to the initiative; however, because it attracted so many camera crews and created a fuss among female sex workers in nearby premises, the experiment had to be suspended prematurely.
[12] Majoor supported the abolition of the Dutch brothel ban in 2000 and considered it "a logical step" towards the decriminalisation of sex work.
'[12] She pointed out that sex workers had been paying taxes since the 1950s, but that this was only now being formalised, there was a sudden crackdown on any form of prostitution that had not yet been legalised (with the aim of combating human trafficking, which everyone agreed with in principle, but not the means by which it was being implemented) and the new policy seemed to be enforced rather arbitrarily.
At the open day of 31 March 2007, for the second time at the initiative of Mariska Majoor, male prostitutes were behind the windows to have sex with either women or men in exchange for payment.
[15] The same day, on her initiative, a bronze statue called Belle by artist Els Rijerse was also unveiled on the Oudekerksplein as a tribute to sex workers.
[15] However, in 2007, the Amsterdam mayor's office[a]) launched a campaign called Platform 1012, which aimed to buy out some window brothels and replace them with fashion and art shops.
[19] She told the Associated Press: 'They [=the mayor's office of Amsterdam] say that they want to have more control over the sex industry because it is related often to human trafficking and abuse, but in our opinion they use that as an excuse only for the gentrification project.
[21][3] In April 2017, she was honoured by the mayor of Amsterdam as a knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for her many years of providing information on prostitution and advocacy for sex workers.
'[23] Majoor was then also diagnosed with stomach cancer in late 2018, forcing her to undergo tougher treatments, and Robin cycled around the city delivering the orders whenever her mother was too ill.[3] When the horeca shut down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Koekje uit Amsterdam was stuck without customers, Majoor donated many boxes to shelters for the homeless, which she had already been in solidarity with for years.
