A county in the U.K. is now labeling acts of misogyny as hate crimes.
Nottinghamshire is the first county in the U.K. to recognize harassment and abuse against women as a hate crime. The police hope it will help them better understand and analyze the wide range of harassment women face just for being women as well as to encourage women to report incidents without fear of the stigma or being ignored by authorities.
“What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing. Nottinghamshire Police is committed to taking misogynistic hate crime seriously and encourages anyone who is affected by it to contact us without hesitation,” said Chief Constable Sue Fish in a statement.
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The police force defines misogyny hate crime 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.”
This could include unwanted verbal or physical advances, assault, touching or electronic communication.
According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, half of all Canadian women will have experienced one incident of physical or sexual violence by the age of 16. A British study found that 85 per cent of women in the U.K. aged 18-24 have experienced unwanted sexual attention.
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Jack Storey, a spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Police, told Global News that it would be misleading to say cat-calling or wolf-whistling has now become illegal.
“It’d only be a problem if for example a woman is walking to work and there is an individual on their route who wolf-whistles at them every morning. It would be made known it was unwelcome but it continues. If that woman would eventually have to take a different route to work because she felt uncomfortable or unsafe, that’s when we would be interested in investigating,” he explained.
Storey said the response has been mixed, but the police force say they know that recognizing misogyny as a hate crime is “absolutely right.”
In an interview with Chatelaine, Fish said that those who believe this new label is “extreme political correctness” only validates her force’s work.
“[That view] reinforces why there is a need to understand this type of hate crime and challenge some of society’s institutional sexism. It makes me more determined to do the right thing,” she said.