On Friday Genuine concerns of women brushed aside
MISOGYNY has been a difficult topic for the government at this week’s Tory Party Conference – not least because the Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, seemed to struggle with the very definition of it.
Asked whether misogyny should be made a hate crime, the Justice Secretary said: “I think we have often seen in the criminal justice system over decades, people trying to legislate away what is an enforcement problem. I think insults and misogyny is of course absolutely wrong, whether it is a man against a woman or a woman against a man.”
Misogyny has a couple of meanings. Its main definition means the dislike, hatred or mistrust of women which comes out in physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual harassment and more. It also covers ingrained and institutionalised anti-women sentiment or prejudice. In other words, bodies and people which have practices that shun or ignore women or actively work against women’s interests.
The government has been facing strong calls to make misogyny a hate crime in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder and the overwhelming number of women who have spoken out about their experiences of harassment, abuse and violence at the hands of men since.
But Boris Johnson this week rejected the calls, saying ‘real crime’ was more important and indicating that making misogyny a hate crime would overload the criminal justice system.
So, basically it’s too big a problem, faced by too many people to even attempt to tackle it.
Trust in the police among women has dropped this week to what seems like an all-time low – not just for the unthinkable crimes that Couzens executed but for the response of the Met Police afterwards, claiming he was ‘one bad apple’ and encouraging women to flag down a bus or run away if they felt uneasy about an officer.
For the Tory leaders to then be so out of step with how women were feeling in their response to overwhelming calls for misogyny to be taken more seriously was upsetting.
Taken in the context of a much wider issue around the reporting and conviction rates for crimes overwhelmingly perpetrated against women at all levels, it is genuinely concerning.
Misogyny has been treated as a hate crime by Nottinghamshire Police since 2016. In the period from April 2016 to March 2018, 174 women reported misogyny hate crimes. Of these, 101 were recorded as hate incidents – failing to meet the threshold of a criminal offence. Just one resulted in a conviction.
An investigation by UN Women UK earlier this year found 97% of women aged between 18 and 24 had been sexually assaulted. Only 4% of them reported those incidents. Around 45% said they didn’t report it to the police because they didn’t think it would change anything.
In the year to the end of March 2020, 58,856 cases of rape were recorded by police forces in England and Wales. Just 1.4% of those cases resulted in a suspect being charged (or receiving a summons) and just 2,102 were prosecuted, compared with 3,043 in the previous 12 months.
So misogyny is just the tip of the iceberg.
There were many red flags where
Couzens was concerned long before he raped and murdered Sarah Everard. There are always red flags. Of course, not all misogynists will go on to murder or rape a woman but it can be one of many warning signs.
Boris Johnson said earlier this week that rape victims needed a ‘better service’ from police. He highlighted possible changes in the way evidence is handled and mobile phone data is collected and pledged to get more convictions for rape and sexual violence offences.
The Home Office belatedly announced an independent inquiry following Sarah Everard’s murder to look at how Couzens was able to serve as a police officer, and into the wider issues and culture within policing.
Both initiatives will hopefully mark a step forward. But the government needs to take crimes against women and unacceptable male behaviour towards women seriously at every level.
Only then will women stop being afraid to report crimes against them and have the trust that something will actually be done.