Items tagged “misogyny,”

Engender submission of evidence to the Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland Working Group

Engender is grateful for this opportunity to submit our views to the Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland Working Group. These comments represent a summary of our existing work on hate crime and challenging misogyny, all of which is publicly available.

Engender, alongside other national women’s organisations, has practical concerns about including gender-based violence against women in the model of hate crime. The Scottish hate crime model protects women who experience crimes motivated by hatred towards them because of their membership of a minority group, including lesbian and bisexual women, disabled women, trans women, and Black and minoritised women. Violence against women is a human rights violation and a cause and consequence of women’s inequality. It occurs at endemic levels in both public and private settings. Misogynistic behaviour, harassment and abuse is a constraint on choice and freedom at significant scale, which demands a credible and appropriate criminal justice response. Simply put, women cannot live a good life while harassment rooted in sexism and misogyny is allowed to inflect our daily reality. Yet gender and ‘hate crime’ is substantially under-theorised and there are limited examples to learn from, including overcoming barriers to effective utilisation of the law to respond.

Date of publication: September 2021