How many times have you been harassed in the street? How many times has this left you feeling unsafe as you go about your everyday life? Have you ever been physically approached or touched without your consent in a public space? Sadly, the answer to these questions for all too many women is yes.
Until very recently if any of the above did happen to you there was little you could do. Reporting such occurrences to the Police rarely resulted in any action being taken because, all too often, there wasn’t technically anything they could do.
The good news is that such incidents could officially be classified as criminal actions because misogyny could soon, officially, be classified as a hate crime across England and Wales. Police forces across the country are contemplating following in the footsteps of Nottingham Police and defining misogynistic behaviour as a hate crime.
The crackdown in Nottingham earlier this summer involvedspecially trained police officers targeting behaviour such as street harassment and unwanted physical approaches. It saw more than 20 investigations launched in just two months; the city’s police have revealed that they investigated a case of misogyny every three days in July and August.
The success of Nottingham’s trial has drawn interest at a national level. In terms of how reports of misogyny compared to other hate crimes such as Islamophobia or antisemitism Police have said that initial figures were broadly comparable but likely to rise significantly as awareness of misogyny as a crime increased.
Speaking to the Guardian, Nottingham Police’s hate crime manager said: ‘the number of reports we are receiving is comparable with other, more established, categories of hate crime. We have received numerous reports and have been able to provide a service to women in Nottinghamshire who perhaps wouldn’t have approached us six months ago. The reality is that all of the reports so far have required some form of police action.’
Nottingham Police force currently define misogyny as‘incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman.’ However domestic abuse, which is already classified as a crime in its own right, is not included under the umbrella of misogynistic hate crimes. The legislation is designed to recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation which women experience daily that, until now, has not been recognised as being illegal.
The possibility of Nottingham’s initiative becoming nationwide couldn’t come at a better time. Last week it was reported that violence against women and girls across England and Wales has reached record levels.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.