Case Explained: Students need misogyny to be recognised as a hate crime – Legal Perspective

When we began our roles as sabbatical officers, one priority was clear: improving student safety.

Trigger warning: this article contains references to rape, assault, and harassment.

Very quickly, it became apparent that while serious sexual offences can carry severe sentences, the everyday behaviours that shape women’s lives, catcalling, groping, sexually suggestive comments, and harassment, are too often minimised, overlooked, or left entirely unpunished.

Sexual harassment, as its own category, is rarely criminalised in practice. As a result, many students are left asking a difficult question: why report something when it feels unlikely that anything will be done?

This lack of consequence not only enables harmful behaviour but also actively discourages reporting. This is why we – Lily, Amara, and Holly – have launched a petition calling for misogyny to be recognised as a hate crime.

A national threat

Violence against women and girls in the UK has been formally described as a “national threat“. In 2023, the Home Office included VAWG within the strategic policing requirement, recognising it alongside terrorism and serious and organised crime. In 2024, the National Police Chiefs’ Council described it as an “epidemic“.

In England and Wales alone, over one million VAWG-related crimes were recorded during 2022/23 – around 3,000 offences every day, accounting for 20 per cent of all police recorded crime. Recorded VAWG-related crime increased by 37 per cent between 2018 and 2023. At least one in every 12 women will be a victim per year, with the exact number expected to be much higher.

Yet much of the gendered hostility women face daily remains legally invisible.

On campus

Universities should be places where women can learn, socialise, and thrive without fear. The reality is different. Women students face harassment walking to lectures, in campus bars, at sports socials, in halls of residence, and increasingly online – in group chats, on dating apps, and across social media. For many, it starts in freshers’ week and never lets up.

The data bears this out. The Office for Students’ first sector-wide sexual misconduct survey, published in 2025, found that one in four final-year undergraduates (24.5 per cent) had experienced sexual harassment since starting university, with 14.1 per cent reporting sexual assault or violence. Female students reported harassment rates of 33 per cent, and LGB+ students reported rates of nearly 47 per cent – almost double the overall population.

These patterns start early – Girlguiding research found that 67 per cent of girls and young women have experienced sexual harassment from other students at school, rising to 83 per cent among 17- and 18-year-olds.

When students do report, they face a fragmented system. Universities have their own conduct processes, but these operate separately from the criminal justice system – and neither is well-equipped to deal with the low-level but persistent harassment that shapes women’s daily experiences.

The OfS survey found that only 13.2 per cent of students experiencing harassment made formal reports to their institutions – and for sexual assault, just 12.7 per cent of under-21s reported incidents compared to 86.4 per cent of those aged 31 and above. Behaviour that falls short of criminal thresholds often falls through the cracks entirely, leaving women to manage risk themselves – changing routes across campus, avoiding certain spaces, moderating what they wear, travelling in groups.

The problem doesn’t stop at campus boundaries. Among harassment cases occurring outside university settings, 58.4 per cent still involved someone connected to the victim’s institution. This isn’t about isolated incidents – it’s about a culture in which misogynistic behaviour is normalised, from “banter” in group chats to harassment on nights out, and where the absence of meaningful consequences signals that such behaviour is tolerable.

Our ask

In current hate crime law, where hostility based on a protected characteristic – race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender identity – is demonstrated or proved as a motivating factor, it operates as an “aggravating factor” at sentencing. Courts must treat it as more serious. We are calling for sex and gender to be added to this list, so that crimes motivated by misogyny receive the same legal recognition.

Recognising misogyny under hate crime legislation would not replace existing offences but strengthen them. It would also clarify legal definitions of misogyny, harassment, and abuse, helping to reduce victim-blaming and ensuring the law reflects the lived reality of these crimes.

For students, legal recognition matters beyond the courtroom. Universities take their cues from the law – if misogyny is recognised as a form of hate crime, it strengthens the case for institutions to treat it with the same seriousness as racist or homophobic harassment, in their policies, their training, and their responses to reports.

The Law Commission

This is not new territory. The Law Commission examined this question in depth in 2021 and – it must be acknowledged – recommended against adding sex or gender as a protected characteristic for aggravated offences. Their reasoning was significant – proving hostility would be difficult in the context of violence against women and girls, which often occurs in private and where misogyny manifests in subtle, ingrained ways. They warned this could create a two-tier system where some sexual offences receive a “misogynistic” designation, and others do not.

But the Commission did recommend extending “stirring up hatred” offences to cover sex and gender, and called for a review into a standalone public sexual harassment offence, which subsequently became law through the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023. The question of aggravated offences remains unresolved.

Some women’s organisations have questioned whether hate crime frameworks are the right vehicle for addressing gendered violence. Rape Crisis England & Wales noted that adding sex/gender “would further complicate the judicial process and make it even harder to secure convictions” at a time when rape prosecutions are already at historic lows.

Women’s Aid has argued that including VAWG crimes within the hate crime framework could “undermine the understanding of VAWG as inherently misogynistic.” There is a concern that requiring explicit evidence of hostility could paradoxically obscure how patriarchy operates – through normalised entitlement rather than conscious hatred.

We take these concerns seriously. But we believe the symbolic and practical value of legal recognition outweighs the risks – particularly when the alternative is continued invisibility.

Nottinghamshire and Scotland

The Nottinghamshire Police pilot – the first force to record misogyny as a hate crime category from 2016 – provides some evidence. The 2018 evaluation found 87 per cent public support for the policy and reported it was “shifting attitudes,” with police speaking to perpetrators about their behaviour.

Scotland offers another reference point. Following the Baroness Kennedy Working Group report Misogyny – a human rights issue (2022), the Scottish government initially committed to a standalone Misogyny and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which would have created specific offences including misogynistic harassment and threats involving rape, sexual assault, or disfigurement.

In May 2025, the government announced it would not proceed with the Bill in this parliamentary session, citing complexity and the implications of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland judgment on the definition of sex. Instead, regulations were laid in January 2026 to add “sex” as a protected characteristic under the existing Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

This is a narrower approach than the original Bill – but it demonstrates that progress is possible. The consultation received 365 responses, with 309 supporting the addition. The regulations are currently awaiting MSP approval.

Why now

Misogyny does not exist in isolation. Online spaces have become prime ground for its spread – from deepfakes to revenge porn – and this hostility frequently spills into offline harm, with rape-related content appearing every 29 minutes on some platforms.

For students, the online dimension is inescapable – group chats where women are rated and degraded, anonymous platforms where harassment flourishes, social media pile-ons. The algorithmically-driven spread of “manosphere” content means that young men are being radicalised into misogynistic worldviews at scale, and women students are experiencing the consequences in their seminars, their societies, and their relationships.

Research published in 2025 found that 76 per cent of secondary school teachers were “extremely concerned” about the influence of online misogyny in their schools, with male pupils praising misogynistic influencers and engaging in discriminatory behaviour towards female classmates. These are the students now arriving at university.

Recent student-led research shows the impact of legal recognition. A Russell Group-wide survey that we commissioned found that 67 per cent of students would be more likely to report their experiences if misogyny were treated as a hate crime. Legal change alone won’t shift deeply ingrained attitudes – but without it, cultural change becomes even harder to achieve.

Intersectionality

Misogyny does not operate in isolation. Women who are Black, disabled, LGBT+, or from minority faith communities often experience overlapping hostility – sometimes facing multiple forms of prejudice simultaneously. On campus, this can mean international students facing xenophobic harassment alongside sexism, or disabled women being targeted in ways that exploit both their gender and their disability.

Existing hate crime law already recognises this through “multi-aggravator” cases, where more than one protected characteristic is relevant. Legal recognition of sex and gender-based hostility would need to work alongside, not in competition with, protections for other characteristics. Our intention is for this change to strengthen protections for all women, recognising that those at the sharpest end of misogynistic abuse are often those who face intersecting forms of discrimination.

Labour’s promise

In opposition, Labour was clear. Its 2021 green paper Ending violence against women and girls, committed to adding sex and gender as protected characteristics in hate crime law. The paper acknowledged that police forces recording misogyny was “a step forward” but said Labour “wants to go further” – advocating for hostility based on sex or gender to trigger aggravated offences or enhanced sentencing.

Yet the 2024 manifesto was silent on this specific pledge. This petition calls on the government to honour what it previously promised.

What it would do

Making misogyny a hate crime would enable more meaningful sentencing where misogyny is a proven motivating factor, explicitly name and address a form of targeted violence women did not create, and signal that everyday harassment is not “normal” or acceptable. It would increase reporting and institutional accountability – including from universities – and bring England and Wales into line with the direction of travel in Scotland.

Change starts with collective pressure. As sabbatical officers and SU staff, we’re often the first point of contact for women students experiencing harassment. We know how inadequate the current frameworks are – and we know how often we’re left telling students there’s little that can be done. Legal recognition of misogyny as a hate crime won’t fix everything, but it would give us stronger ground to stand on when pushing our institutions to act.

We’re asking students’ unions to share the petition with their members. Put it in your newsletters, post it on your socials, talk about it at course rep training. The more students who sign, the harder it becomes for the government to ignore.

Structural change is possible – but only if we demand it together.