New laws to be considered on tackling sexism against women in Scotland

The Justice Secretary is to consider recommendations on new laws to tackle sexism against women in Scotland.

It follows the publication of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC’s report on Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland, which has been welcomed by Keith Brown.

This comes on International Women's Day, which is today.

A working group was set up to independently consider how the Scottish criminal justice system deals with misogyny.

This included examining if there are gaps in the law that could be addressed by a specific criminal offence to tackle such behaviour. 

The group gathered oral and written evidence from a number of experts and stakeholders and from people with lived experience to determine what more can be done to tackle misogynistic conduct.

Recommendations will be considered on creating a Misogyny Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act containing a public misogynistic harassment offence, an offence of stirring up hatred against women and girls, an offence of issuing threats of, or invoking, rape or sexual assault or disfigurement of women and girls and a new statutory aggravation of misogyny.

Keith Brown MSP said: "I would like to thank Baroness Kennedy for the hard work she and her working group have undertaken in the development of this report. 

"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.

"We are absolutely clear that women and girls should not experience any form of harassment, abuse or violence which is why we set up this independent Working Group and it is fitting its findings were published on International Women’s Day."

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