Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Is making misogyny a hate crime really a victory for women?

A girl sporting a venus symbol takes part in an anti-sexism demo (Getty images)

Misogyny will now be recorded as a hate crime by police. But is this really the victory for women’s rights that campaigners are claiming it to be?

It’s absolutely right, of course, that the law is bolstered so that incidents against women are taken seriously by the police. But the wording of the policy is disappointingly woolly, relying heavily on what the victim perceives as the motivation for the crime. Speaking in the House of Lords, Home Office minister Baroness Williams said that from the Autumn: 

‘We will ask police forces to record and identify any crimes of violence against the person… where the victim perceives it to have been motivated by a hostility based on their sex.’

The wording of the policy is disappointingly woolly

In the aftermath of the Sarah Everard case, Boris Johnson has talked about how women who bring serious complaints about violence to the police must be ‘properly heard’. But if the resulting policy makes the testimony of the accuser sacrosanct then it will risk undermining the fundamental principles of our justice system.

It’s also not clear what will be done with the information that is recorded. Will each accusation recorded as a hate incident go down on the accused’s criminal record? Citizens UK and a coalition of campaigners – including Refuge and Women’s Aid – believe the approach will ‘provide critical data on the link between hostility to women and the abuse and harassment women experience’. But the data won’t be worth much to policy makers if the incidents it covers aren’t corroborated by a body of evidence beyond the victim’s report of the event.

Trials of the policy in Nottinghamshire back in 2016 show the breadth of interpretation that could be given to the definition of misogyny by the police. Examples of accusations that were recorded as hate crimes or hate incidents ranged from sexual assaults and upskirting to whistling, sexually explicit language and unwanted sexual advances.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in