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

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.’

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. While an unwanted sexual advance could in many cases warrant police action and prosecution, should it be designated as misogyny?

Attempting to criminalise someone’s motivation as well as their actions is a slippery slope that leaves the law open to overreach and misapplication.

At it stands, incidents of misogyny will simply be recorded by police. But it’s clear that this move is designed to be a holding measure until the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill can create the power to issue tougher sentences to offenders whose crimes have been recorded as motivated by misogyny. Hate crime legislation currently covers race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity but not gender. The law commission is looking into whether the definition of hate crime should be expanded to cover violence against women.

If this policy is to work, there needs to be an evidence-based approach to recording hate incidents against women that goes beyond the victim’s testimony and an agreed protocol for what is done with the information. Otherwise the policy will simply create a plethora of data on incidents that carry no legal weight. 

We could also end up with a situation where the police feel they have done their job if they record an act of violence against a woman as a ‘hate incident’. There is no incentive to pursue further action or attempt to gather more evidence because all that is required for the event to be defined as a ‘hate incident’ is the victim’s account. This could actually set back the cause of women who have been subject to abuse rather than advance it.

Sadiq Khan’s declaration that the new policy meant ‘It’s time for every Londoner to call out sexist and misogynistic attitudes wherever they are found – in the workplace, school, on the streets or public transport,’ shows the extent to which the policy could backfire. If a female employee feels she has been subjected to a misogynistic ‘attitude’, will this go down as a hate incident on the record of the accused male employee if the event is reported to the police? No doubt some campaigners would argue that it should. But will the accused even be asked for their side of the story?

If the government wants to take violence against women seriously, then watertight legislation is needed that will allow cases to stand up in court. The jury’s still out on whether this particular policy will deliver the goods.