The workplace and other public spaces. This hmay be an issue that the committee will decide to look at more closely and more detail in this incredibly useful session today will help inform the inquiry as we take it forward. I can first start by thanking our witnesses on behalf of the committee for taking time out to be here and i know the preparation required to be here is significant. Thank you. The usual practice is that we have questions from committee members. Weve got a lot of ground to cover. I heigmight use my chairs abil to move things on if need be. Just before we start with the first set of questions, could you say your name and the organization you represent starting with claire. Im a professor of law at durham university. Im scarlet harris from the tuc. Im mark hamilton. Im michael conroy. Our first questions are from eddie. Good morning. When she visited the uk this 2014, the u. N. Special reporter on violence against women said the u. K. Had a boys club, sexist culture. Do you think that statement can be justified . I would suggest walking into this room passed about 200 years of unbroken patriarchal domination suggests that based on some reason. I can speak for my own personal experience. Obviously, the women have got much greater insight into that. I will say that everything about our culture is defined in male dominance. We need to address that, identify it and pick it for everybodys health, for the cultural health. I would agree but im sure its much greater insight into it. Any other comments . Just before we move on, how do you think the impact of that is different for men and women, boys and girls . Of living in a patriarchal culture . Yes. Women are prone to Sexual Harassment. The rates of rape and Domestic Abuse and street harassment absolutely apailing and unacceptable. Theres impacts for boys which is suicide, male to male violence and they can all be traced to a counter performance and rigid interpretation of what it means to be a man. Its toxic for men and women. Boys can have it. From a Police Perspective commenting on the culture of the uk is tricky because we tend to base our evidence upon our understanding of crime or even noncrime, unreported crime. What it would say is the evolution in terms of crimes of Sexual Violence, crimes of Domestic Violence. Can i say when youre giving your answer, you will also have the perspective effectively as somebody who works in an organization. Its not just how the Police Interact with society. What society like in the police, i imagine there might be possibly some sexism there as well. It has associated a view thats a culture. I think theres personally, from my own experience placing and agree with that. From the experience i think that the progress has been to gender balance and the precinct we still have a long way to go. I think it permeates across so many levels. Having 20 or 30 years ago started to more address how women are treated in terms of Sexual Violence. How women are treated in terms of Domestic Violence. The debate is moving very firmly towards how women are treated generally as victims within the system. Be it street harassment, be it verbal abuse, be it the attitude that is shown in casual and the impact that it has upon women not just as an individual but women as a group in society. Were talking spervcifically. Its never been more present as it has been for now. Its a significant issue of consideration of placing how we will address this and how we should address it. Therefore i dont think that debate would be there if there wasnt a necessity to have it, if women werent experiencing things that shouldnt be happening and a sort of gender basis for that occurring. I agree. Its testament to the continued sexism and sex discrimination. I dont know whether were more of a boys club than other countries. Other countries too and i think that patriarchy and oppression and sexism against women is very common place across lots of country. Michael and mark spoke about violence against women and Sexual Harassment. That Boys Club Culture and that sexism extendson that. Pregnancy discrimination. The sexism faced by girls in schools, occupational segregation. All of these things are linked and paint a picture of a society that isnt fair for the women. Lets stick with that theme. Do you think theres consensus with regard to definition for sexism and Sexual Harassment in terms of policy terms and the view that society takes generally. I know there was polling in the light of various allegations from hollywood and lots of Media Attention on the issue of Sexual Harassment. Polling about Public Perceptions of what Sexual Harassment was and tfit was not in line with wt the law says Sexual Harassment is. Im sure mark would consider to be serious crimes. How its defined in law and how people generally on the street might understand sexually harassment. I think theres no law that im aware of that fully defines everyones behavior. Try to qualify to deal with continuing things but it never works. Once progress has been made this dealing with serious crime naming and labeling the way they should be, issues such behavior that people feel should be accepted as part of the interaction of daily life. I have a damaging impact. Sexual harassment of a woman or a girl at a bus stop by a male might be something that some women feel they have to accept. As i reference before, its moving much more to identifying those issues in the same way we would other types of incident or crime. Establishing a crime has been credit or not but even if a crime hasnt been committed, the debate is similar to hate crime incidents. Should we take action to address the behavior before it escalates into a crime and also adults to try to restore some confidence to the victim and allow them to feel thats what happened to them is being addressed by society. Okay. Is there evidence or what evidence is there that sexism, gender stereotyping are linked to Sexual Harassment and violence against women . Theres a number of attitudal studies that suggest individuals displace sexist attitudes. They are more likely to also accord which height might be ine of a rape culture or sexist culture. Some of those studies are experimental in terms of psychologically profiling individuals opinion theres evidence about association. Theres evidence about an association between safe, for example, young peoples views of porn and they are then displaying sexist attitudes. Theres not correlations but associations there. I think we can look around us and suggest that in a sexual culture, we sexualize sexism, there are links between that and the discrimination that predominantly women experience in society. Also, if i could just add this really interesting study. Its a u. N. Organization. Real interesting read. Its the study of 3,000 men in the uk, u. S. And mexico. It asks them in a series of focus groups, they are 18 to 30. It asks how they would respond to 13 different questions about how they view women or how they view themselves, about homophobia and a range of issues. The ones who score the highest in the internal scoring system of this research are not profoundly what we would say in this box but arctticulate in th most rigid form of masculinity and have strictest views of gender roles, are most homophobic and acts of violence. This is by admission that they are six i think it indicates the u. K. And u. S. The young men who fall at the most masculine, if we can say that and the spectrum six or seven times more likely to admit to Sexual Harassment or sexual assault. Its clear ly a decented with o recent evidence of three cultures. Young men who seem to have to appear ininvulnerable. They have to be physically tough. They have to get the last word, et cetera. Also much more likely to admit to suicidal ideation, taking risky behavior on a regular basis and indulging in alcohol and Substance Abuse on a regular basis. Thatst the good reason accessible study that i would recommend. Clare. Thats it. Im not sure, im not familiar with that piece. Its an international organization. Its based in the u. S. It has lots to work with the u. N. And its about reducing what it refers to as gender inequality and gender base violence word wide. It commissioned a study in the university. They did indepth focus groups in leads. Well take a look. Assuming that to be the case and that were to be valid, is the extension of that if we address gender stereotyping we therefore have a effect we we deu reduce harassment . I believe thats a reasonable inferen inference. Thoughts from other members of the panel whether those two things would be linked that way. Would we be addressing a significant root cause of the problem. I think you need to do both. These boys will go on and have much more respectful attitude towards women. There are correlations between very male dominated workplaces and making a distinction between sexism and Sexual Harassment. Some of the stuff overlapped. The display of porn might be con tr construed as Sexual Harassment. Making jokes of a sexual nature. I think theres a link there and i think that this is i think hopefully come to more questions about Sexual Harassment in the workplace. We know this is an issue of all workplaces and very widespread issue. I think it can be particularly problematic for women working in male dominated workplaces where they are the only woman or one of view women in a quite masculine set iting. How would you determine what consensus there is with in society as to what should be prohibited. You were saying in one environment this would be acceptable. In society, generally how do we determine what consensus there is to what should be prohibited . For the law to decide and it frames it quite clearly and guide ts guides it. Is society running behind statutory view on that . I referred earlier to some polling that was done recently that would indicate yes. A lot of people do not have a good understanding in relation to Sexual Harassment. I think there is and clare will probably be able to expand more. It may well be that one person may not consider something to be Sexual Harassment where as someone else would. How that action or comment is received is very important. My understanding is in the court of law and a tribunal. It will be interesting to hear clares view on that but mark if you have any its unwanted. Its any conduct thats unwanted and theres an onnous on the person committing it to understand theyre behavior is wanted or not. Were trying to create an environment where people who receive unwanted behavior then have the strength and support to come forward and report it. I think were seeing more and more of that. Its very basic, it is unwanted behavior and thats the difference between what some person, one person might accept becau because the behavior might be want e wanted. It probably gets a little bit for people. The quality act legislates for this behavior. Any unwanted conduct is beyond the pale. Its not primarily Sexual Harassment. We talk a lot about prejudice and what causes prejudice. Theres a number of activities we feel in addressing that. One is encouraging people talk about it and report it so its exposed to a conversation and exposed to challenge. Then theres enforcement. What we say, how we behave. Theres of us who have a role in public service. I think it goes a long way to setting standards that people will abide by. Its how the media report it. Show respect for each other and understand they are competing perspectives and try to agree to consensus in the debate this is not an attack upon one community by another or a one gender by another. Its actually about trying to identify unwanted behavior in our society and deal with it. Its not about trying to isolate anybody else. With the number of actions we can reduce the instance of it but also very important we can increase peoples capacity to kpaj challenge it. Theres clear definition of what constituted Sexual Harassment in the equality act. Requires to services and workplace. Theres range of criminal laws that overlap with that. In relation to the criminal law Social Security ad hoc and piecemeal. You have discussions about Sexual Harassment. It shows most people thinks that shoots against the criminal law. Its not covered. What i think is common across the civil and criminal law is a minimizing and triflizing of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence. Thats common across the board and can be addressed by broader prevention strategies. There is also a need to update some of our laws this this regard that might send a clearer message which might then help to bring people together to a common understanding of what constitutes Sexual Harassment and why its harmful. Do you think theres enough to tackle Sexual Harassment . Weve had measures in the last few years around what i call image base sexual abuse. Often called revenge pornography. Theres been a good start but i think we need to go further. They are taught by experts because the geography teacher coming in, doesnt do the same job as an expert who might achieve that. Theres steps being taken but an awful lot more that could be being done. Its a good step in the right direction. I think one area the government could make a difference is in gathering data. Its good and robust. It seems odd thats the only source of data when the government is so good at measuring other things. They consider that to be important and a baseline in the way of benchmarking and measuring whether there are changes this behavior over time. Its a flurry of private commissioned polls and its good and coming up with fairly similar stitypes of statistics would be good to have robust data that will give us a better picture of whats going on this different sectors and age groups. Focusing as a potential conversation for a hate offense and one of those was to review the scope of crime. The numbers of it. That review hasnt come forward. When was that . 2014. Theres an option to whether or not they wanted to do that. Because of reported strands, have provision around sentence. As we would describe it, come back to it thinking we did in a minute. If were going to make it congruent, we would be looking to, if the police were going to take certain action, it woultd be saying were similar to other areas of hate theres consideration of provisions so other strands have equal status. Where we are with that is presenting her evidence to us. We plan to put papers through. The consideration of it as a hate crime. Even if we report on this nationally, there are complications by trying to fit gender base crimes so it doesnt fit. Then the question would be so what. Thats a bigger debate than me. Do you think when you say people should come forward and report it and you expect people coming forward and reporting it, do you think theres a resolution for somebody who reports it . It depends on the response you get from various services. For example, if you report it, you might get a different response. Let eets say the index offense was an offense of assault. There could be an uplift in sentencing. Thats not there. Standard assault on a female could be a sexual assault. The work i do tends to be with boys and young men age 11 to 18. My interest is in the training and capacities of teachers and supporting staffing skills that the psa is taught by experts and probably resourced and takes more time and more depth and perhaps the best way to do that rather than trying to keep filling heavy workload of teachers. I come from family of teachers. I work with teachers every day. I know extremely busy and hard working they are is to build that into requirement of teacher training so youre looking up all the time rather than trying to add to things overstretched and over burdened. I would like to see the fovt make concrete Resources Available to expert teaching. Thats a common misconception. Understand why you ask that question. I think if you can help good men make healthy rational choices about how they interact with the young men, women and girls throughout their lives, professionally as dad, uncles, neighbors, whoever they are, youll do them a real service. There have a great deal of evidence to suggest that those kinds of conversations are felt to be lacking by boys and young men. Its a bow flnus and a help. Anything can be presented badly. Thats how its tone on the ground. Just a very quick yes or no from each of you. You arent what currently exist at the moment. Past, present and laws that exist at the moment if youre a victim of sexism or Sexual Harassment in the treat. Do you think you would get a reasonable resolution if you reported it. I think when you speak to of this range of activities, its very patchy. Patchy. Patchy. Im going to say patchy too. I would not want to put anyone off from reporting. Our analysis did know only four in five no, one in five reported and of those 75 say they saw no outcome. So very patchy. Mark. Inconsistent. Inconsistent. Inconsistency driven by what in your service . Probably the understanding of the offense or how its categorized of motivation for it. Training . Yeah. The conversation were having is cutting across various parts of law from just standard harassment. Its a varying response. Varying response. How those reports are dealt with. Do you think the law and in its current form clear and what changes would you recommend . My second question is do you think society knows their rights, responsibilities and protection in law which were covered briefly and are there special and consistent legal implications across the uk. Others need for change in law . Yes. There are other European Countries that have such an offense. What i think is more appropriate is to tackle specific areas. For example, around online abuse and tackle some of the inconsistencies this piecemeal acti