Laura Bates

English feminist writer

Nick Taylor

(m. 2014)

Laura Bates BEM FRSL (born 27 August 1986) is an English feminist writer. She founded the Everyday Sexism Project website in April 2012. Her first book, Everyday Sexism, was published in 2014.

Biography

External videos
Everyday sexism: Laura Bates at TEDxCoventGardenWomen, TEDx Talks, 16:05, 17 January 2014

External videos
Shouting Back :Laura Bates, Caroline Criado-Perez and Samira Ahmed at Conway Hall 19:30, 9 October 2014

Bates' parents are Diane Elizabeth Bates, a French language teacher, and Adrian Keith Bates, a physician.^[1] She grew up in the London Borough of Hackney and Taunton, and has an older sister and a younger brother. Her parents divorced when Bates was in her twenties.^[2] She attended King's College, Taunton.^[1] She read English literature at St John's College, Cambridge, and graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2007. Bates remained in Cambridge for two-and-a-half years as a researcher for the psychologist Susan Quilliam, who was working on an updated edition of The Joy of Sex.^[2]

Bates then worked as an actress and a nanny, a period during which she has said she experienced sexism at auditions and found the young girls she was caring for were already preoccupied with their body image.^[3]^[4]

Everyday Sexism Project

The Everyday Sexism Project website was founded in 2012. Around the third anniversary of the website, in April 2015, Everyday Sexism had reached 100,000 entries.^[5] Bates has said that she has faced abuse online. After her publication of Men Who Hate Women in 2020, Bates said she received deepfake pornography images of herself performing sexual acts on the sender.^[6]

Bates' first book Everyday Sexism, based on the project, was published by the London subsidiary of Simon & Schuster in 2014.^[7]

Career

After Everyday Sexism, Bates published several more books about sexism. Bates is a contributor to The Guardian,^[8] The Independent^[9] and other publications. She is a contributor to the New York–based Women Under Siege Project.^[10]

Honours and awards

2013: Cosmopolitan magazine's Ultimate New Feminist Award in 2013.^[3]
2014: BBC's 100 women.^[11]
2015: British Empire Medal in the 2015 Birthday Honours for services to gender equality.^[12]
2018: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.^[13]
2020: Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.^[14]

Personal life

Bates married Nick Taylor in 2014.^[2]^[15]

Publications

2014: Everyday Sexism: The Project that Inspired a Worldwide Movement, Simon & Schuster ISBN 1471131572
2016: Girl Up: Kick Ass, Claim Your Woman Card, and Crush Everyday Sexism, Simon & Schuster ISBN 9781471149504
2018: Misogynation: The True Scale of Sexism, Simon & Schuster ISBN 9781471169243
2019: The Burning, Simon & Schuster ISBN 1471170209
2020: Men Who Hate Women, Simon & Schuster ISBN 9781471194337
2022: Fix the System, Not the Women, Simon & Schuster ISBN 9781398514331
2023: Sisters of Sword and Shadow, Simon & Schuster ISBN 9781398520042

References

^ ^a ^b "Bates, Laura Carolyn, (born 27 Aug. 1986), Founder, Everyday Sexism Project, 2012". Who's who & who was who. 2014. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U281470. ISBN 978-0-19-954088-4. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c Bates, Hannah (12 April 2014). "Rape Threats, Groping and Perverts – Everyday Sexism: Why Laura Bates Is Shouting Back". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
^ ^a ^b Hines, Sophie (5 December 2013). "Laura Bates Wins Ultimate New Feminist 2013". Retrieved 20 August 2014.
^ "BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Power List 2014 – Top Ten Revealed: 9. Laura Bates, Campaigner". BBC. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
^ Sanghani, Radhika (16 April 2015). "A Day in the Life of the Everyday Sexism Hashtag". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
^ Saner, Emine (31 January 2024). "Inside the Taylor Swift deepfake scandal: 'It's men telling a powerful woman to get back in her box'". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 January 2024.
^ Bates, Laura (2014). Everyday Sexism. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781471131578.
^ "Laura Bates - contributor page". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
^ "Laura Bates - contributor page". The Independent. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
^ "Laura Bates - contributor page". Women Under Siege Project. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
^ "Who are the 100 Women 2014?". BBC News. 26 October 2014. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
^ Bates, Laura (12 June 2015). "Queen's Birthday Honours List: Knights Outnumber Dames Five to One". The Guardian.
^ Flood, Alison (28 June 2018). "Royal Society of Literature Admits 40 New Fellows to Address Historical Biases". the Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
^ "Everyday Sexism activist and founder of Raspberry Pi elected as Honorary Fellows of St John's". St John's College, University of Cambridge. 9 May 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
^ Bates, Laura (28 June 2014). "How to Have a Feminist Wedding". The Guardian.