The Liberated Pimp

Ditch digging, plumbing, truck driving, lumbering. One by one, fields once closed to women are opening up. Among the latest to admit females: pimping. Hamburg, Germany, scene of this latest "advance," now has 300 to 400 female pimps, each bound to one prostitute in a lesbian relationship. "With the emancipation of women and the increasing tolerance of homosexuality," Police Official Karl Heinz Westphal explained last week, "more and more prostitutes refuse to be exploited by a male pimp and turn to women as surrogate men."

For the police, women pimps mean less trouble than their male counterparts because they confine themselves to pimping, while men often pursue a variety of criminal interests ranging from theft to assault and even murder. Prostitutes themselves do not necessarily fare better when exploited by females rather than males. Just as prostitutes keep their male pimps in flashy suits and opulent cars, they deck out their female bosses in expensive clothing and glittering jewelry. True, the female procurer may keep house and provide a semblance of family life for her whore. But like a male pimp, the female sometimes fakes affection to cajole her prostitute into earning more money, and in some cases beats her into submission.

Hamburg police recount the sad tale of a prostitute named Erika and a pimp named Helga. For two hard-working years, they saved money to go into business as antique dealers. Then Helga ran off with the money. Heartbroken--and furious--Erika went to the police and charged Helga with pimping, but the case was dismissed because the German penal code recognizes only men as procurers. That legal bias will be corrected some time next fall, when a new law will make pimping by either sex a criminal offense. Small comfort for Erika, however. Her once beloved Helga has already used Erika's earnings to open an antique shop of her own.

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