PIE+ An Audience with Laura Bates

Laura Bates is a best-selling author and the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a global collection of testimonies to catalogue instances of sexism experienced on a day-to-day basis. She works closely with organisations from the police to the United Nations to raise awareness of gender inequality and to tackle the systemic ideas which uphold it.

The Everyday Sexism Project began as a way for Laura to come to terms with the sexism she was experiencing as a budding actress and the inequalities she saw working as a Nanny. She wanted to see if others felt the same way and in doing so created a safe space for everyone to share experiences that may otherwise get brushed away or labelled as ‘normal’. The project gathered 100,000 testimonies within the first months and continues to grow. Data from the website has been used to create effective change - from using experiences to campaign against children’s apps promoting plastic surgery to working with the British Transport Police to ensure people know that they can, and should, report offences.

Her book Everyday Sexism compiles what she learnt from the project and looks further at how the experiences brought to attention can be tackled. She expands her thinking on this topic in Misogynation, a collection of essays further exploring the systemic issues rooted in workplaces, streets, and homes. Her other books include Girl Up, a guide for young women tackling topics including body image, sex and the media, and Men Who Hate Women, a comprehensive look at the incel movement. Ten years on from when the project began, she continues the conversation around the structural change needed to combat the misogyny ingrained in society in Fix the System, Not the Women.

Laura writes regularly for the Guardian and the New York Times and is a regular media commentator across Today, Woman's Hour, Newsnight and BBC Breakfast. Named by Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine as Woman of the Year, Laura documents and decries sexism across all platforms.

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