Women and hate crime : a useful political strategy?

Hate crime legislation has gained increasing support in the US since the 1990s by a diversity of groups who experience violence and prejudice including feminists campaigning around violence against women. Australian responses have been somewhat different. This article explores the origins of hate crime and presents a critical appraisal of the usefulness of applying hate crime to violence against women. In particular I consider how useful redefining violence against women as a hate crime would be as a feminist strategy in preventing violence. Germaine Greer has argued that 'Women have very little idea of how much men hate them' (1999:280). The consistent and repeated levels of brutality perpetrated by some men against women they supposedly love would suggest that hatred and fear of women are part of the motivation for the violence. This analysis has resulted in the United States in a 10 year campaign by the National Organisation for Women (NOW) for the inclusion of women in Federal hate crimes legislation. In Australia, a discussion of the usefulness of this approach seems to be slowly emerging. In this article, I will consider some of the dilemmas in uncritically extending categories of hate crime to include violence against women. In particular I will consider how useful redefining violence against women as a hate crime would be as a feminist strategy to prevent sexual violence.