Women struggling in the cost-of-living crisis are resorting to paying tradies with sex, workmen have revealed

Cash-poor women are resorting to paying tradies using the world’s oldest profession as the cost of living continues to bite - or is it about something more than just a lack of cash?

Women struggling in the cost-of-living crisis are resorting to paying tradies with sex, workmen have revealed.

Women struggling in the cost-of-living crisis are resorting to paying tradies with sex, workmen have revealed.

But they say for many women it’s not a matter of money, but an urge to fulfil a “tradie fantasy”.

The Sunday Mail has found advertisements for a dozen tradies or handymen offering to do work for women in exchange for sex.

Two who agreed to be interviewed said it was “mostly housewives” who paid them that way.

Among the advertisers are an Adelaide mechanic, 36, and another from Salisbury, 29, who says he is looking to “trade service for fun”.

Trade for Sex - screenshots

Trade for Sex - screenshots

An advertisement for a qualified electrician in Noarlunga, 28, says he is willing to do minor work on “fans, power-points and lights” for “rewards”.

One man, a licensed electrician and handyman who offers his services as “the naked electrician”, said that he started offering his services across Melbourne’s northern suburbs three years ago.

“I guess I’d seen a lot of women taking an interest in me while on jobs and I guess I knew that people were often having trouble paying for things to get done, or sometimes not even paying at all,” he said.

“So for me it was win-win.”

The electrician said that the going rate was usually one day of work in exchange for one session of sex.

One plumber openly advertises that he can be paid in sex because he “knows times are tough at the moment”.

Another tradie’s ad says: “Straight only happy to use youre (sic) wife as payments.”

Research from the UK suggests the most likely time women will offer a tradie sex as payment is for “emergency call outs”.

Trade for Sex - screenshots

However, one Australian man who spruiks himself as ‘Jack of All Trades’ says he does not prey on desperate women, but instead fulfils women’s “tradie fantasy” to mutual benefit.

Survey after survey shows that traditional trades, normally only behind medicos, are considered the sexiest professions.

The Sunday Mail also found several adverts from women, as well as couples and men, directly asking tradespeople to come to their house to pay them with sexual favours.

One woman advertising online, using a highly airbrushed photo of herself, says that she needs her car battery replaced and a new alternator and will give “three or four hours of her time” in return.

A man in northern Queensland posted online that he wanted to pay tradies for their work with sexual acts and explained how for him it was “both a kink” and “a great way to save money”.

The cost-of-living crisis has been driven by a dire housing shortage across the country and 13 consecutive interest rate rises, issued to combat inflation, before the Reserve Bank finally cut the official rate last month by 0.25 points to 4.1 per cent.

Originally published as Women struggling in the cost-of-living crisis are resorting to paying tradies with sex, workmen have revealed