Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of global gender inequality. She is the author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), the Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Misogynation, The Burning (nominated for the Carnegie Medal), The... Read more
Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of global gender inequality. She is the author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), the Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Misogynation, The Burning (nominated for the Carnegie Medal), The Trial, and Men Who Hate Women. Her most recent book, Fix the System, Not the Women, was named one of Waterstones’ best books of 2022. Her books have been translated into 8 languages.
Laura writes regularly for the Guardian and the New York Times amongst others and won a British Press Award in 2015. She is a frequent media commentator across Newsnight, Today, BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News, CNN and more. She has presented two BBC television documentaries and is a consultant for productions tackling issues around gender inequality.
Laura works closely with politicians, businesses, schools, police forces and organisations from the Council of Europe to the United Nations to tackle gender inequality. Her campaign work alongside other activists has included persuading Facebook to change its policies on rape and domestic abuse content, putting sexual consent and healthy relationships on the school curriculum and improving the way in which the British Transport Police respond to incidents of sexual violence. Her speaking work has taken her from Wembley Stadium to the Sydney Opera House to President Obama’s White House Summit on the United State of Women.
Laura is a contributor at Women Under Siege, a New York-based project tackling rape in conflict worldwide and she is patron of SARSAS, Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support. She is on the Board of Directors for Equimundo, an NGO which is a global leader in engaging men and boys to advance gender equality and prevent violence against women.
Laura was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to gender equality in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2015 and has been named a Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine. She has been named on the Woman’s Hour Power List and was one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women. She is the recipient of two honorary degrees and was awarded the Internet and Society Award by the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners Lee. In the US, she has received the Women’s Media Award from the Women’s Media Center, and been named one of CNN’s 10 ‘Visionary Women’.
Laura is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of the Hay Festival and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. She has judged the Women’s Prize, the BBC Young Writers Award, the YA Book Prize and the RSL Giles St Aubyn award, and has been on the judging panel for the Children’s Laureate.