The sex industry is undermining equality between women and men in the workplace.

A report by The Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading campaign for women’s rights, reveals the use of lap dancing clubs and display of porn in a work context is a major threat to equality.

Corporate Sexism: The Sex Industry's Infiltration of the Modern Workplace reveals more than two fifths of UK lap dancing clubs directly target employers through marketing on their websites. Nearly nine out of 10 London lap dancing clubs provide ‘discrete receipts’ enabling employees to claim their excursions back expenses without it being evident where the money was spent.

Further revelations are lads’ mags are displayed for sale purposes in more than 50,000 workplaces despite their explicit material and a quarter of trade unions have received enquiries from members who have been exposed to the sex industry – including pornography - at work.

The report recommends implementing independent regulation of sexually explicit print media, pushing lads’ mags up to the top shelf when displayed in shops and introducing workplace policies preventing lap dancing clubs being used in a work context.

Kat Banyard, Campaigns Officer at the Fawcett Society and co-author of the report, said: “Despite relative silence on the issue within employer circles, our research shows that the sex industry is a major threat to women’s equality at work. For too long, employers have engaged with the sex industry without due regard for the impact on female employees, and have failed to prevent the illicit use of the sex industry by employees in a work context. But this is an issue that employer’s cannot afford to ignore.

“The sex industry is increasingly targeting the corporate market, with lap dancing clubs marketing themselves as ideal venues to host meetings and client entertaining. Yet lap dancing clubs are a form of commercial sexual exploitation and fuel sexist attitudes towards women. Their use in a work context discriminates against female employees and undermines women’s status at work.

“While the days when it was deemed acceptable to hang ‘girly calendars’ on office walls may be long gone, the presence of degrading imagery of women in UK workplaces has never been more endemic. Pornographic lads’ mags are openly displayed in over 50,000 retail shops – each one of them somebody’s workplace. But displaying these magazines in this way is in violation of the Sex Discrimination Act, so it is crucial that retail employers cover up pornographic newspapers and lads’ mags and place them on the top shelf.”