Rise in voyeuristic movies of girls and women in public prompts requires misogyny to be made a criminal offense
Secretly filmed content is being shared online for profit and to degrade women and girls, according to campaigners who are continuing their call to make misogyny a hate crime
Calls to make misogyny a hate crime have been reignited in the hope of tackling the rise in secret filming of women and girls in shared public spaces.
Campaigners and experts in digital harm this week joined MP Wera Hobhouse in resurfacing requests to make misogynistic acts an offence in England and Wales.
A change to the law would mean misogyny – which is defined as a hatred or dislike of women and girls or a sense of male superiority – could be considered as a possible element of a crime such as stalking or harassment.
Footage of women and girls in public – on nights out, while exercising or simply just walking or being in public spaces – is increasingly being captured covertly on smartphones or smart-glasses and uploaded to online forums or social media without their consent.
Often the videos are monetised online, with comments and shares centred around sexual gratification, derogatory or misogynistic views or for ‘humiliation entertainment’.
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Mrs Hobhouse put forward her plans at a roundtable event which brought together campaigners, academics and experts in online harm and violence against women and girls to seek solutions to the issue of women being covertly filmed in public.
The event heard how in 2024 Greater Manchester Police arrested a man for repeatedly making nightlife voyeurism content and selling it online, but the case against him failed due to his actions failing to meet the thresholds of a crime.
Mrs Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, believes a change in the law would make covert filming for misogynistic purposes easier to prosecute and called for the Law Commission to review a recommendation it had made in 2022 against categorising gender-based prejudice as a crime.
She told the Mirror that covert filming and nightlife voyeurism were symptomatic of misogyny within wider society, adding: “This is an attempt to harm women, to ultimately make them change their behaviour in the public space, to make their voices smaller, put them back in the box
“They don’t dare to go out any more, they don’t dare to speak up any more, through this behaviour that is alarming and harassing them and that is ultimately aimed at putting women back into a space where they are not heard, not seen, not taken notice of.”
She pledged to keep pushing for legal recognition of misogyny, adding: “It’s not a silver bullet, but it would be a very strong signal that would radiate out to all sorts of other pieces of legislation from which we could benefit. It’s not the only thing we can do, but I will pick up again the issue of making misogyny a hate crime.”
Olga Jurasz, the Director of the Centre for Protecting Women Online, told the Mirror that technology was escalating the issue of misogyny in society and blamed a lack of investment in the protection against violence against women and girls.
She said: “These behaviours are preconditioned by sexism, misogyny, by discrimination of women that runs not because we have this technology in place, but because for many, many years there has been a failure to invest in prevention of violence against women and girls, failure to invest in prevention of gender stereotyping and real investment to make a conscious choice that as a society we stand against the discrimination, sexism and misogyny.
“Unfortunately we are finding ourselves now at a joint road where these two problems collide and technology is amplifying these societal issues.”
