Gender and Hate Crime: Beyond the Floodgates

• In Event: Hate Crime Victimization Across Groups

Abstract

This paper explores the opportunities and barriers for advancing a fuller realization of gender as a protected category under hate crime frameworks. Based on a four year research partnership with Victoria Police aimed at advancing understanding and implementation of prejudice motived crime strategies in one Australian state, the paper draws out the position of gender as a protected category in Australian jurisdictions and compares and contrasts this with other international jurisdictions. It focuses on the potential of legal and policing frameworks and the extent to which these have been operationalized in various jurisdictions and what appear to be the main facilitators and impediments to successfully extending hate crime to women as victims of gendered crime, such as sexual and other forms of violence motivated by misogyny/prejudice against women. One of the main impediments to extending hate crime frameworks to women victims is the ubiquity of gendered violence, such as family violence, and the practical limitations of dealing with such a vast number of crimes against women as hate crime. The paper argues that this practical limitation can be addressed and sets out the parameters for doing this in order to better meet the enhanced opportunities for justice that hate crime envisages.

Authors

• Gail Mason, University of Sydney

• JaneMaree Maher, Monash University

• Jude McCulloch, Monash University