THE Scottish Government will bring back plans to criminalise misogyny after dropping the legislation last year, John Swinney has announced.
In his opening statement ahead of the Scottish Parliament’s first debate following the 2026 Holyrood election, the First Minister told MSPs that a Misogyny Bill would be brought forward to “outlaw misogynistic harassment and abuse in Scotland”.
We previously told how the Scottish Government quietly dropped the original plans in May 2025.
In response to a Government question, it was revealed that ministers said there was “insufficient time” for the misogyny legislation to be brought forward, in part due to the implications of the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act 2010.
Plans for an LGBT conversion practices criminal ban were also dropped.
Speaking in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, John Swinney said the SNP Government would provide “greater security also for women and girls, with a Misogyny Bill to outlaw misogynistic harassment and abuse in Scotland”.
Calls for world-leading misogyny laws in Scotland were recommended by Baroness Helena Kennedy in the report Misogyny - A Human Rights Issue, published on International Women’s Day in 2022.
Kennedy’s report called for the creation of a Misogyny and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act which would include a statutory aggravation of misogyny, which could lead to a harsher sentence, and a new offence of stirring up hatred against women and girls.
It would also establish two further new offences - public misogynistic harassment, such as street harassment, and of issuing threats of, or invoking, rape, sexual assault or disfigurement of women and girls - both offline and online.
In response to a written question in May 2025, Minister for Parliamentary Business Jamie Hepburn said: “This is a complex area of policy and law, and it would be necessary that any bill which brought misogyny into criminal law contained clear and unambiguous provisions in regard to the circumstances in which they apply.
"This would include the implications of the recent Supreme Court judgment.”
The Supreme Court judgment ruled that under the Equality Act 2010, the definition of a woman is by biological sex, not gender.
Last week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published long-awaited guidance on the impact of the ruling on single-sex spaces, which trans advocacy groups said left transgender people with “less rights”.
