EDINBURGH (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The Scottish government should implement a misogyny act, according to a report released this morning.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has argued for “innovative, change-making, and radical” legal changes, including a new legislation to fight misogyny, advocated a new report for the Scottish government which was published earlier today.
The report, titled ‘Misogyny – A Human Rights Issue,’ calls for the making of a Misogyny and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act. The Act would create a new statutory aggravation of misogyny, a new offence of stirring up hatred against women and girls, a new offence of public misogynistic harassment, and a new offence of issuing threats of, or invoking sexual assault or rape or disfigurement of girls and women both online and offline.
The report emphasises that these suggestions are meant to be a comprehensive solution rather than a list of options.
If the Scottish government implements it, Scotland would be at the forefront of the fight against misogyny around the world.
Recognising that the law alone will not be enough to combat misogyny, the Scottish government is urged to devote sufficient resources to training across the criminal justice system and frontline public agencies, such as colleges and schools; to improving police capacity and technology for recording and reporting; and to educating men and boys about misogyny. Women should be encouraged to regard this rule as a tool to help them deal with their daily experiences of abusive behaviour and to report it if they witness or experience it.
The proposals are the product of a year-long investigation led by Baroness Kennedy and a strong eight-member working group. To address misogyny in the criminal justice system, the independent Misogyny and Criminal Justice Working Group was established in January 2021. The group was asked to evaluate if there were any gaps in existing legislation and whether adding “sex” in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 would be an effective means of safeguarding women.
The research says that adding ‘sex’ as a characteristic to current hate crime legislation isn’t a good idea because misogyny is so deeply embedded in society that a more fundamental set of solutions is needed, according to the working group.
The group argued that misogyny was multifaceted, involving less hate and more masculine entitlement and male primacy preservation. The law’s function would be to make abusive behaviour stemming from misogyny illegal.
The working group investigated the issue by conducting a survey of women’s lived experiences of misogyny in Scotland, which received over 930 responses, as well as gathering existing evidence and research from a variety of women’s organisations, academics, legal and policy experts, and Police Scotland. The group also looked at other countries’ attempts to combat misogyny.
