WHEN does ‘no’ mean ‘yes’? When it’s said by a woman. It seems the moment a woman starts talking about anything sexual, she is not to be believed if she so much as hints she may not be up for it.

As court reporter, I have sat through more rape and sex trials that I care to think about. Time and time again, the jury will move heaven and earth to avoid convicting the defendant if the victim is an adult woman.

Of course they have to be sure the defendant did the deed, but they seem to want him to tell them exactly how he forced himself on her before they will convict – and he’s never going to do that if he’s pleaded not guilty.

There have been cases where the woman told the jury under oath that the defendant hit her and raped her and they convicted him of hitting her, but acquitted him of raping her. Why the difference? If she can be believed on the assault, why can’t she be believed on the rape?

The unpleasant truth is that we live in a society where a woman is assumed to want sexual attention unless she screams the roof down, and even then she might just playing hard to get.

It’s all right for a man to decline the approach of a woman, though his mates might pull his leg afterwards if she’s attractive. A man is instantly believed when he says no. But a woman has to say no three times before the man gets the hint and leaves.

Even the law continues the theme. Rapists are men who force themselves on a woman without the woman’s consent. But the law allows a defendant to be acquitted when the woman doesn’t consent.

According to the law, a defendant is not guilty of rape if a jury think that he may have reasonably believed the woman consented, even if she didn’t.

Add in the stigma attached to the word rapist. If a man can come across as a decent sort in the witness box with the flimsiest of stories about how he might have misinterpreted her ‘no’, the average jury will do its best to avoid calling him a rapist to his face and acquit him.

I’ve seen a jury unable to convict a man who jumped his neighbour in her own garden and pushed her down on the ground at 3am in winter. Why would any woman want to get her back battered by sex on a stone path when she had a warm, comfortable bed a few yards away? Why would any man think that she did?

The result is that it is easy for a certain kind of man, and there are plenty of them about, to think that when their sex hormones are rampant, the nearest woman just has to co-operate because no one will believe her if she later cries rape.

All he has to do is say she changed her mind afterwards or she took his trousers down for him. If you’re facing a prison sentence for rape, a bit of perjury doesn’t matter.

And after the jury acquit him, what’s he going to think? He’s got away with it so why shouldn’t he get away with it again, and again, and again.

It’s time for equality in sex. If a woman says ‘no’, she means it, and it’s up to men and the law to respect that just as we respect a man’s ‘no’.

Until we change social attitudes to women, rape convictions will continue to be a rarity – and women will continue to be molested and groped and raped night after night in our city.