When French student Marie Laguerre had "dirty comments" made to her by a stranger, she shouted back.

He responded by throwing an ashtray at her and storming over to slap her in front of a cafe full of shocked bystanders.

"I felt hatred," Ms Laguerre told Le Parisien.

"I refused to be demeaned, it was humiliating. I refused to look down, I looked him right in the eyes, I was not going to apologise."

Video of the incident went viral this week, but for many women it wasn't a surprise. Calling out misogynistic behaviour often makes the situation worse.

So how can we make progress against bad behaviour when women who stand up for themselves get attacked for it?

Ms Laguerre shared CCTV footage obtained from the cafe on her Facebook page. ( Facebook: Marie Laguerre )

Perhaps a trial from Nottinghamshire shows a way forward. In 2016, local police in the UK city began recording misogynist behaviour in a radical new program.

Under the Misogyny Hate Crime policy, police received 174 reports of misogynist behaviour between April 2016 and March this year. Of these, 73 were classified as crimes and 101 as incidents.

In one incident, a stranger on a tram called a woman a slut. In another, two men in a van shouted at a woman who was walking to work early one morning. They asked her to get in their vehicle. "It was leery," she said. "The whole experience was really intimidating."

Another woman was grabbed on the backside while she was out jogging at 6:00pm. Yet another, also jogging, took a photo of a van to record its number plate after the driver yelled sexually explicit things at her as he drove by.

These accounts appear in the Misogyny Hate Crime Evaluation report, a joint project by the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University that was released in June. The report recommended rolling out the program across the country to increase publicity and reporting.

"There is clear support for the policy from both women and men in the general public and from victims," it found.

Marie Laguerre said the attack left her with swelling around the cheek bones. ( Facebook: Marie Laguerre )

Would it work here?

Violence against women is a serious problem in Australia, where one in three women has experienced physical violence from the age of 15. Street harassment is an issue too — one study found 87 per cent of Australian women have experienced at least one form of verbal or physical street harassment.

So what are the implications of adopting a similar gender-based hate-crime policy in Australia?

Types of street harassment In a Nottinghamshire survey, 93.7% of respondents had either experienced or witnessed street harassment, including: sexual assault (24.7%)

sexual assault (24.7%) indecent exposure (25.9%)

indecent exposure (25.9%) groping (46.2%)

groping (46.2%) taking unwanted photographs on mobiles (17.3%)

taking unwanted photographs on mobiles (17.3%) upskirting (6.8%)

upskirting (6.8%) online abuse (21.7%)

online abuse (21.7%) being followed home (25.2%)

being followed home (25.2%) whistling (62.9%)

whistling (62.9%) sexually explicit language (54.3%)

sexually explicit language (54.3%) threatening/aggressive/intimidating behaviour (51.8%)

threatening/aggressive/intimidating behaviour (51.8%) unwanted sexual advances (48.9%)

The landscape is different in Australia, says Gail Mason, a professor of criminology at the University of Sydney Law School and co-ordinator of the Australian Hate Crime Network. She says the only police forces to record hate crimes are in NSW and Victoria.

In NSW: "If a crime is motivated by bias or prejudice on the basis of the person's race, ethnicity or gender, the police can record that as a bias crime — the same thing as a hate crime."

Whether that happens in practice is another matter, she says. "Very few gender-based hate crimes are ever reported or recorded."

Three jurisdictions — NSW, Victoria and Northern Territory — consider whether prejudice is a motive at sentencing. Misogyny could be viewed as an aggravating factor under sentencing legislation, says Fahim Khan, senior lawyer at Criminal Defence Lawyers Australia.

"The court can impose a more serious punishment if there is proof provided to the court that those offences were motivated by prejudice towards a certain group of people," he says.

It's harder to prove someone is guilty of misogyny "beyond a reasonable doubt" in a criminal case than it is to show prejudice is an aggravating factor, he says.

"The reality is that it comes into play during sentencing as opposed to individuals being charged separately with a hate crime."

But this is not a common occurrence — both Mr Khan and Ms Mason are aware of just one case where misogyny was deemed an aggravating factor during sentencing. In 2007, the court ruled two offenders in a sexual assault case were motivated by sexist attitudes towards women and increased their sentence.

Is misogyny a hate crime?

The question whether misogynist behaviour should be viewed as a hate crime is a complex one.

In theory, it is, says Ms Mason.

"Sexual assault, for example, is often motivated by objectification of women, prejudicial and stereotyped attitudes towards women and sometimes hatred towards women," she says. "Is there a difference between that type of bias and racial bias or ethnic bias? Not necessarily."

"[But] you have to ask yourself, 'What's achieved by including sexual assault as a hate crime?' We already have aggravated penalties for aggravated forms of sexual assault, so do we need additional sentencing provisions on top of that? I'm not convinced."

The fact Nottinghamshire's Misogyny Hate Crime scheme recorded just one conviction in two years led some critics to dismiss the policy as a waste of police resources — but what if convictions were not the policy's ultimate goal?

"The primary objective of the policy change was not to see hundreds of prosecutions, it was to let people know that this behaviour isn't acceptable and will not be tolerated in Nottinghamshire," Helen Voce, the chief executive of Nottingham Women's Centre, told the Independent.

Recording misogyny is not necessarily about punishing bad behaviour — it's about collecting data that can be used to shape public policy and help women feel safe. It allows authorities to understand more about the nature of harassment: where, when and how frequently it occurs, who is experiencing harassment and how it affects their behaviour, and who the perpetrators are and what they do.

"If you do get a hot spot — a particular pub, a particular area where stuff is happening all the time — that's reported to the police, they can do something about that," Ms Mason says.

After numerous women in Nottingham reported harassment by workers on building sites to police, officers approached the building site managers to ask for the behaviour to stop. "This may have made a difference to the behaviour of some men in these industries," the report noted.

In this context, Ms Mason believes the policy has value. "The role of police has become a more complex one — their job is not just to catch the crooks, their job is also to assist the community to feel safe," she says.

It's important the criminal justice system takes misogynist attitudes in the community seriously, she says. The legal system already addresses violence, but what flies under the radar is "low-level stuff", she says, like catcalling and abuse in the street.

If this behaviour is recorded, women are more likely to feel reassured their concerns are important to police.

"Do we prosecute somebody who calls out a sexist comment on the street? Probably not," she says.

"You don't get a criminal conviction for that. But we need to find ways of getting the message out there that that's not acceptable … and the justice system does have a role to play in that."

Nicola Heath is a freelance writer.