The University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University carried out a review of the impact of the misogyny hate crime policy introduced by Notts Police in April 2016. Results showed there is clear support for the policy from men and women in the general public, as well as victims who have reported. The overall recommendations call for the policy to be rolled out nationally alongside publicity to increase reporting and education to help change behaviours.
Please follow this link to read the Misogyny Hate Crime Evaluation Exec Summary June 2018.
The results also show that some members of the public (men and women) and the police viewed the term ‘misogyny’ as too elitist/academic and suggested ‘gender hate crime’ could be used instead. We do not support this approach for a number of reasons.
We feel strongly that misogyny should be used as the key word to understand why certain behaviours are taking place and after taking evidence locally and nationally the Police chose this term too because of the need to recognise the way that women’s experiences differ to men’s (and within this to understand the overlap of misogyny into other forms of hate such as transphobia, anti-Muslim hate and homophobia). Misogyny hate crime is part of a continuum of violence specifically targeted against women and girls. The Police had been able to record gender hate crime for about a decade before the introduction of this policy yet very few reports were received so we believe this explicit identification is necessary to encourage women to report the hate crime they experience purely because of their gender.
It’s also a public statement by a law enforcement agency that is saying misogynistic behaviour isn’t acceptable here. In Notts this has further empowered women to challenge inappropriate behaviour (when they feel safe to do so) as well generate lots of conversations about how we bring about further culture change.
So we say stick with Misogyny Hate Crime – it’s working!