Written Submission of Evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into sexual harassment of women and girls in public spaces

Abstract

First paragraph: We are responding to the call for evidence by this Committee on Sexual Harassment of Women and Girls in Public Spaces in our capacity as experts on social media abuse, and online misogyny. We have in the past made significant contributions to UN calls for evidence on online harassment, and to the Bracadale Review on Hate Crime in Scotland. In addition, we have made representations to the Scottish Government as to the need to amend legislation to cover a wider range of harassing and abusive behaviours online. We are in the process of completing a world-leading volume on Online Misogyny and Legal Regulation, due to be published later this year (2018) by Routledge. We have been working on issues relating to harassment of women and girls in online spaces since 2013. We are possibly your only evidence respondents that have experience of the wider issues surrounding online harassment, and who take a holistic approach to the legal problems posed by such harassment, merging criminal law, gender, human rights, and internet law expertise. As such, we have been encouraged to provide further evidence (as per below), which would supplement the other expert evidence provided. We would add that we are happy to give evidence orally to the Committee if this was of use. We are only commenting on the questions posed regarding preventing and responding to sexual harassment of women and girls in public spaces, with a particular focus on online sexual abuse.