Are there still any laws that apply to women but not men?

@CuppaTeaJanice,
Under English law, one requires a penis in order to rape someone. However, a woman could be charged with Assault by Penetration, which carries the same penalty as Rape.

In NI the age at marriage stayed at 12 and 14 for girls and boys until 1975, so a 46 years later

Up until 1929 in England and Wales a female could marry at 12 years old and a male at 14 years old, the laws where changed

Seems weird as now if a boy of 16 had sex with a female of 15 the male would be placed on a sex offenders list - yet less than a century ago it was legal to actually marry

slug - I am with you on the procedure - but surely that is the doctor who can't sign on his/her own and needs a second signature and not the female patient.

On death you need two doctors to sign for cremation but only one for burial ( or is it the other ways round?)

Edgar are you arguing that all non violent crimes are less serious than all violent crimes?

Sorry Edgar but Trillian is right you need to look at it in the context of total numbers.

Say 100 women and 100 men all commited a shoplifting offence and got sent to prison.

Now lets say that there are another 100 men who commited violent offences and got sent to prison but that there were no women sent to prison for violent offences.

This would show that 100% of women in prison were there for non-violent offences but only 50% of men were in prison for non-violent offences but the women in this case are not being treated unfairly.

You also said that "also twice as many women (27%) are in jail after their first offence - than men."

but this suffers from the same interpretation error - all that says to me is that men are more likely to re-offend.

All it tells you is, of the total prison population, 27% of women of first offenders (compared with 12% of men). What it doesn't tell you is how many of the 88% of men that are in for subsequent offences were also sent down for their first offence (75% of the male prison population are in for 3 or more offence compared with only 56% of the female population suggesting that women are less likely to re-offend).

The current stats here don't appear to break down sentences by sex and previous convictions, although the PDF that JeaninePattibone links to above, has some old data which actually shows for shoplifting, drugs and violent offences, less women than men get sent to prison whether first offenders or not:

8% or Male first offenders sent to prison for shoplifting compared with 1% of women and 15% of male reoffenders compared with 5% female.

Edgar - I showed you above how the percentage of women in prison could be like that even if everyone who did commit a crime was treated exactly equally.

Trillian,
the law categorises it in terms of sexual activity regardless of orientation. Anyone over 16 can consent to anything. Under 16's can't (in theory but two 15 year old don't tend to make complaints against one another) -under 13 and consent isn't an issue at all (it cannot happen regardless of what either party is agreeing to).

erm, but trillian - the percentage is more indicative than the number -

that is if it was 65% for oth, then you'd say - yes just as many of the women committed a person to person crime.
but that's not the case-
far more of the women did not commit person to person crime but still went to prison - as a percentage

that shows women are being sent to jail for lesser crimes.

Women cannot have one particular medical proceedure without the consent of two doctors. There is no medical proceedure for men, as far as I know, where men are not deemed competent enough to make a decision for themselves.

From 1931 until 1998 when it was abolished, pregnant women could not be sentenced to the death penalty.

OP - it is not an offence in itself for a woman to be topless in public, but could be considered an offence under the Public Order Act if it resulted in "harassment, alarm or distress" (section 5) or there was intent to cause such (section 4a).

I've never heard of a woman being arrested under section 5 for going topless, although I'm sure there must have been arrests under the old common law offences.

Ah, but how do you define lesbian 'sex' as distinct from 'heavy petting' (which is done by a lot of people of all orientations under 16).

No, gallicgirl - age of consent is the same for both genders now.

I think there's no age of consent for lesbians but there is for homosexuals. I heard it dates from the 19th century when the age of consent for heterosexual couples was raised from 13 to 16. At that point homosexuality was illegal but allegedly Queen Victoria didn't believe that women would engage in "that sort of activity" and therefore refused to ratify the legislation for women. I'm not sure it's still in place though.

"63% of women are in prison for non-violent
offences, compared with 45% of men."

Meaningless unless you know how many men and how many women committed violent/non-violent offences.

for example:

If 2,000 men and 2,000 women committed non-voilent offences, and 50% went to prison, we have 1,000 of each in prison for non-violent.

If 1,000 men and 500 women committed violent offences, and they all went to prison, then we have 1,000 men and 500 women in for violent.

So that's treating everyone absolutely equally, but 1,000/2,000 = 50% of men are in for non-violent offences and 1,000/1,500 = 66% of women are in for non-violent offences.

When you divorce, if you divorce for the grounds of adultery, it doesn't count if your wife left you for another woman, it has to be a man to count for adultery

Only someone with a penis can commit section one rape, so I suppose genders are treated differently for that offence(understandably).

I would however be suprised if any of those 26% in for shoplifting also fell into the category of the 27% who had not got any previous convictions.

One issue that skews these types of statistics is the disproportionately high number of woman that are imprisoned for drug trafficking. Most carriers will not have previous convictions but will nearly always receive a custodial sentence due to the seriousness of the offence.

rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hors170.pdf

This is from 1997 so could be considered out of date. I'm having trouble copying text from PDF, so you'll just have to take a look for yourselves.

2010
27% of women in prison had no previous convictions ? more than double the figure for men

this is interesting - 63% of women are in prison for non-violent
offences, compared with 45% of men.

More women were sent to prison in 2007
for shoplifting offences than any other
crime. They accounted for 26% of all

so, 1 in 4 women prisoners for shoplifting! - i would say this is a lesser crime than mugging - mugging involves an assault upon a person of some kind.

also twice as many women (27%) are in jail after their first offence - than men.

so fa, i looks like women go to jail for lesser offences. when you really compare like with like.

Sorry that should be men were getting 3x longer custodials.

Must. Proof. Read.

ISNT I would also be suprised if woman were getting 3x longer custodials than woman, but would nonetheless be interested to see the stats to which Heroic referred to.

Certainly men are more likely to commit (for example) violent crime than woman and therefore that would account for why more men are in prison for violence.

On a professional level I would be stunned if "most woman going to prison have no previous convictions". Generally speaking it is actually extremely rare for a custodial sentence to be imposed for a first offence (male or female). Further as a percentage of all sentences imposed for all offences, custodials are also rare.

No it doesn't. It gives some contextless stats. It doesn't show the many other criteria that affect sentencing like previous convictions, multiple crimes, the seriousness of the crimes within the category. It needs someone with an understanding of all of that to analyse that data. Like the Prison Reform Trust or Helena Kennedy. Or someone with the opposing view. A table to stats is not enough.