HELENA Kennedy's report for the Scottish Government into whether misogyny should be criminalised contains a laundry list of examples of the daily, grinding misogynistic acts faced by women.

If you are a woman, you will be able to run down the checklist and, like a sort of horrible bingo, tick off those that apply. Most of them, I imagine, or you'll know a woman they've happened to.

Or women they've happened to.

It's good timing for the release of the report, Misogyny - A Human Rights Issue. This week marked International Women's Day, with all the meaningful recognition of discrimination against women and women's unpaid labour and all the meaningless corporate shilling of organisations wanting to look good for their efforts.

I cried as Jess Phillips, again, stood in the House of Commons and read out the names of women killed in the last year where men have been accused or convicted of causing their deaths.

The list comes from Karen Ingala-Smith, who keeps record with the Femicide Census.

This year the MP read out 124 names and an additional four of women where no one has been charged for their murders. It took three long minutes to say every woman's name, turning page after heavy page, to a largely empty chamber, very few MPs bothering to turn out to bear witness. Those there were mostly women, as it always is.

Murder is the final expression of misogyny but Lady Kennedy is clear that the proposed new legislation would not be used in connection with crimes such as rape, murder and domestic abuse where misogyny is inextricable woven in.

Some of the newspaper headlines said that the report recommends making misogyny a hate crime.

The concern with hate crime legislation is that it is about the policing of wounded feelings but this report avoids that. In fact, it does something different and something more ambitious.

The new act, the Misogyny and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act, would be "created to address experiences of women". It would, the report recommends, create a statutory aggravation relating to misogyny, and three new offences.

These suggested new offences are designed to respond to the treatment of women that prevents them engaging fully in public life and exercising their rights. One, an offence of stirring up hatred against women and girls, aims to tackle the modern problem of incel culture, a movement that radicalises men in despising women.

The second and third tackle misogynistic harassment in public, and issuing threats of disfigurement, sexual assault or rape, or invoking these, against women and girls. The latter suggested new offence applies both online and offline and, if you don't spend much time on social media, are far more common than you might think.

For a woman on any social media platform, a rape threat or an acid threat is a fairly common experience. The surprise is managing to get through the week without one.

The law, here, is trying to catch up, finally, with the modern age.

But in recent years, as new legislation has been proposed to tackle new areas of interest for the Scottish Government, "sending a message" has often been held up as a motivation for passing new legislation, despite that being the woolliest of all reasons.

Lady Kennedy's report is, thankfully, more nuanced than this and talks about the necessity of a root to sky overall of social attitudes, institutional attitudes and the need for structural change.

Women often do not know what recourse they have under the law, or if they have any at all, when faced with the types of misogynistic incidents that the report details. They might not come forward to report events believing that they are too trivial, they might fear wasting police time or believe they might not be taken seriously.

We've had similar debates before.

In England there were concerns about the over-reporting of trivial issues when a local constabulary announced it would record harassment of women as hate crime.

In fact, when Nottinghamshire Police made the move in 2016, there was no deluge of reports of men wolf-whistling as critics had feared. Instead there was an increase in reporting of physical assault and indecent assault as more women had the confidence to come forward.

The report also has a promisingly robust section on the protection of freedom of thought and expression, vital, obviously, to a free society, but also to the protection of current debate and differing voices around sex and gender identity. An argument that is made repeatedly will be made here again - that there is scant point to misogyny laws when many MPs are unable to define what a woman is.

Yet while the report's proposals seem ambitious and right, the real stumbling block is what happens next. The Scottish Government has a woeful legislative track record - it seems almost unfair to keep harking back to the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, but it's relevant. Named Persons, for two. The controversial and maligned Hate Crime Act.

There is concern that Scotland lacks sufficient rigour in reviewing laws in the face of the great volume of legislation being created? In some cases it seems as though legislation is created in a vacuum, where the same lobby groups are consulted with those lobby groups often financially reliant on the government.

Scrutiny and meaningful probing are ignored, as is criticism. A failure in legislative process is to prefer theory over evidence.

Yes, the law changes following pressure from passionate campaigners but, even when we completely believe in and fully support those theories, it must be viewed dispassionately.

These recommendations are promising and innovative, they have the potential to make a step change in the pervasiveness of misogyny in Scottish society.

But the next steps, should the recommendations be accepted, are the hardest, drafting law, that is not performative or loosely phrased but robust enough to deliver on its laudable aims.

There's a lot to feel hopeful about in Helena Kennedy's report but will new proposals help target misogyny or are we in for another dizzying merry-go-round of legislative mess? Time only will tell.

The new Gender Recognition Reform Bill is moving forward now too, so there's a doubly whammy of sex and gender-related legislation to keep an eye on.

One irony, with International Women's Day still close in our rear view mirror, is that both of these laws will involve a great deal of unpaid labour from women and LGBT groups, as it always is, trying to resolve issues not of their making.