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

[CuppaTeaJanice]

Or vice versa? Or any offences that carry different penalties depending on the gender of the offender or victim?

The area that immediately springs to mind is being topless in public. Also I expect there were many old laws eg. homosexuality only being illegal for males because Queen Victoria didn't believe females would do such a thing. And women not being allowed to vote, her possessions being 'owned' by her husband etc.

Does anybody know if all the gender inequalities in British law have now been rectified, or are there still a few odd laws left that are not equal?

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

Lots of interesting posts here

I'm guessing that the divorce/adultery rule is part of Queen Victoria's 'women aren't ever homosexual' nonsense?

A lot of confusion over male/female conviction rates. Does anybody know if there are any crimes where it is actually written in law (not just open to a judge's discretion) that penalties are different for male or female offenders? Eg. would a man who rapes a woman automatically receive a harsher sentence than a woman who rapes a man?

Slug are you talking about abortion? If so, I would guess the reasons are because no medical procedure on a man would have direct implications on the life of another human, even if it is at embryonic/foetal stage.

Very surprised at 13 once being the age of consent. I wonder if it was the norm at that time for many 13 year olds to marry, have children etc.?

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?)

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

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

@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.

ivykate - I think the point slug was making was that the woman could sign for the operation herself. It requires a doctor (or 2) to give permission.

Oh, and the age of consent is currently 13 in Spain!

couldn't!

Why was the age of consent 12 for girls but 14 for boys? [confused} And did this mean that if two 13 year olds had sex, only the girl would be punished?

scallops yes I understood what she meant, just wondered if it was about not letting the doctor do the operation in case he was at fault not the woman - if you see what I mean putting the onus on the doctor not the patient.

The minimum age for marriage here

I don't know anything about the age of consent being 13 years old, in which country or century? sorry cupoftea but here is a list of the ages in EU and a few histories

I was referring to terminating a pregnancy ivykaty44.

Thanks for the links ivykaty - really interesting. So the age of consent in England in the 16th Century was just 10!!!!! Also the age of consent for boys in Scotland was raised from 14 to 16 -last month!!

Slug I've thought of an operation a man could have where he couldn't give singular consent (at least I presume not, but I may be wrong) - a pair of adult male conjoined twins, where only one twin wants separation, especially if the operation would mean the second twin would be unlikely to survive. I would be very surprised if surgeons would be able to go ahead with any surgery with permission from just one twin.

CuppaTeaJanice wrote - "I've thought of an operation a man could have where he couldn't give singular consent (at least I presume not, but I may be wrong) - a pair of adult male conjoined twins"

That would also apply to female conjoined twins.

Vesuvia - that was in response to this comment by slug...

...although it would be an extremely rare situation, I know!!

yes I understood that when you first posted, slug

CuppaTeaJanice - nice try, I nearly found myself agreeing and then I realised you would only need the consent of one other person, the other twin. Strictly speaking you don't need a doctor's consent, you just have to find one (or a team in this case) who is willing to do the operation.