Nottinghamshire Police have received more than 80 reports of misogyny hate crime against women in the past 10 months.
A total of 83 incidents have been reported to the force since they began treating misogyny as a hate crime, on a par with racism and homophobia in April.
Of the reports received, 31 have been investigated as actual crimes – ranging from harassment and public order offences, to more serious offences like sexual assault.
The remaining 52 have been treated as ‘hate-incidents’, which are not criminal offences.
Last night an ITV documentary revealed the extent of sexual harassment faced by young women, which included catcalls and car horns on a regular basis for many.
A poll found that 85 per cent of young women say they have been sexually harassed in the street or another public place, and one in five claim they have faced street harassment which has resulted in violence towards them.
Last year another survey by the charity Plan International UK listed Nottingham as the fourth worst place for sexual harassment towards women in the whole of England and Wales.
Currently there are five hate crimes set by the Home Office which must be centrally monitored by police.
They include race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity, however individual forces can introduce additional strands if they wish.
Nottinghamshire Police were the first in England and Wales to introduce misogyny, but other forces across the UK are due to follow in their footsteps by expanding their definition of ‘hate crime’ to include it.
A Nottinghamshire Police spokesman said: “Since we implemented a misogynistic category of hate crime we have received numerous reports and have been able to provide a service to women in Nottinghamshire who perhaps wouldn’t have approached us a year ago.
“The number of reports we are receiving is comparable with other, more established, categories of hate crime and we are pleased to say that so far all of the reports would be seen by any reasonable person as reports of unacceptable behaviour.
“There has been interest from a number of forces around implementing this and we have been continuing to encourage police forces to adopt misogyny as a hate crime nationally.
“We understand it will take some time for the way people think about misogyny to change, but this is certainly another step in the right direction to stopping this kind of abuse.”
Nottinghamshire Police’s former acting chief constable Sue Fish, who has now retired, was handed a national award for her work in branding misogyny a hate crime in November.
