The Scottish government is to consider making misogyny a stand-alone hate crime.

A working group set up to look into tackling violence and harassment against women has recommended the creation of a Misogyny and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act.

It would include misogyny as an aggravation in crimes such as assault and threatening behaviour and create three new offences:

• Stirring up hatred against women and girls
• Public misogynistic harassment
• Issuing threats of, or invoking, rape or sexual assault or disfigurement of women and girls online and offline

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Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, who led the working group, said: “I think that we’ve been struggling to try to make law accommodate the experience of women.

“One of the problems is that the underlying attitudes which inform decision making about prosecutions about what to investigate, about the whole business of criminal justice, isn’t working for women and it’s lost the confidence of women in our population.”

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The work of the review panel pre-dates the murder of marketing executive Sarah Everard in London in March 2021 but, in publishing her group’s findings, Baroness Kennedy cited her death at the hands of Metropolitan Police officers Wayne Couzens.

She said: “This police officer was known to be peculiar in relation to women but also had recently been exposing himself and nothing had been done about it.

“If you don’t act on the lower level stuff, then it creates a subsoil from which much more serious crime like rape and homicide takes place.”

The recommendations have now been handed to the Scottish government.

Justice Secretary Keith Brown said: “This is an extremely important piece of work to help inform policy to address the many forms of violence, transgression and abuse experienced by women which may emanate from misogyny and is a milestone in making our society safe, equal and fair.

“It is clear to me that to achieve true equality we must continue to think about our messaging and how men’s attitudes to women can be effectively challenged to make women feel safe when going about their everyday lives.

“We welcome the working group’s report on its findings and recommendations and will now carefully consider those before publishing our response in due course.”

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