SANDY is 35, has a six figure income, plenty of time to spend with her children and expects to retire with a healthy property portfolio before her 40th birthday.

She's also a sex worker and is happy doing it. And a survey of almost 250 Queensland sex workers, aged between 18 and 57, suggests her story is not unique.

The Queensland University of Technology study found legal prostitutes had similar levels of job satisfaction as women in the general population.

Sandy says she's much happier working as a prostitute for three or four eight-hour shifts a week than up to 50 hours in her previous jobs.

"Obviously, the finacial rewards are great. It would be a very bad year if I was earning $150,000" she said at the Purely Blue brothel in Brisbane's Bowen Hills.

"My kids have more of me than probably most mums have with their kids and I really enjoy what I do. It can be a really, really positive thing. It's a very giving job. It's not the seedy sort of idea that people, I'm sure, have out there. People will be surprised but a lot of the women I work with are married, a lot of us have children, a lot of us have degrees."

"It's a bit of an old thing now to think that the only women who work in this industry are on drugs."

QUT researcher Charrlotte Seib said her study debunked some of the stereotypes about prostitutes.

"Sex work has professionalised. Women aren't necessarily working in the sex industry because they have no other option," Ms Seib said.

Almost two-thirds of the prostitutes she surveyed were employed before they entered the industry and one in four had bachelor degrees or higher.

Ms Seib, a PhD student, said the tudy found women whose families knew about their work reported greater job satisfaction than those who kept their work a secret.

Sandy, a mother of two boys and a teenage daughter, said her husband was aware of where she worked but not her children, parents or friends. "My hunband…. Has total respect for the business and certainly for what I do," she said.

"My parents are very religious, so it's not a subject we can ever talk about. I have a fantastic relationship with my parents but this is not something they would be able to handle and that's fine with me."

"Fortunately, I've got a wonderful, supportive husband and that's all I need."

Although Ms Seib found legal sex workers – those working in licensed brothels or as sole operators – were generally satisfied, the picture was different for street walkers.

Of the 42 illegal sex workers she surveyed 52 per cent had been raped or bashed by a client in the past year.

"People tend to rope all sex workers together," Ms Seib said. "Sex work is a diverse activity. The focus of legislative reforms should be on improving the health and safety of street-based sex workers."

Queensland Adult Business Association spokesperson, Nick Inskip, whose organisation encompasses the legal sex industry, said he was not surprised by the survey findings.

"We find that people in the legal industry are exceptionally empowered," he said. "People are there by choice and when you take away that choice, your happiness with what you're doing is going to go down"

He said that many prostitutes in the illegal industry were drug addicts.

She's happily married, has three children and says she's found more job satisfaction as a sex worker than years as a manager. (pull quote)