it is all highly dubious, but does reflect a grey area. Bullying someone isn't exactly illegal. Intimidating someone isn't exactly illegal. This means that women can be intimidated by a gang of workmen leering and shouting.
Those men are exercising their right to free speech by yelling" oh look at her". As a result of exercising their right to free speech, they are intimidating someone else, and that may prevent her from exercise her right to jog along the street when she lives. It's something many people are not happy about.
It's a clash of rights. my right to be respected and their right to free speech. A lot of synergies with some other topical debates. As with all rights you should think about the responsibilities that coexist with those rights.
In Nottingham, the police speak ( i.e. Investigate) to the victim and to such groups of workmen . In that specific case, they explained to the workmen that their behaviouris inappariate and the men changed their behaviour. They may also offer advice( I think via third parties) to the victim.
What this is trying to do is nudge behaviours towards those that are more acceptable.
Of course, what we have is the police determining who should perhaps be making the most changes to their behaviours.
But what we have without this is that it is up to the woman (or insert your preferred sub group here) to change her behaviours. Always. This is giving a third party the ability to intervene in such instances. Which is imho clearly needed.
SO on balance I think it should be a hate crime, and I think that there needs to be strong oversight, discussion etc, of the use of hate crime interventions and of how clashing rights are best managed.