Laura Bates is a British feminist writer and the founder of ‘The Everyday Sexism Project’, a website that encourages women and men to contribute stories of sexist encounters they have endured or witnessed. A spokesperson for the thousands of people who still experience sexism and an advocate for change, she is an important and inspirational player in the on-going fight for gender equality.
After graduating from St John’s College Cambridge in 2007, Bates worked several different jobs including being a researcher, an actress and a nanny. She founded ‘The Everyday Sexism Project’ in 2012 after what she describes as a ‘bad week’, when she experienced three forms of sexual harassment. These experiences encouraged her to speak to other women she knew and to see how common this was, and the response shocked her into action. The realisation that she was not alone, not only in her experiences of sexism, but also in her hesitance to talk about it encouraged her to create a medium through which people could share their stories and show that sexism is still very real for many.
The Project aims to encourage discussion surrounding real forms of sexism that many people experience on a daily basis. It welcomes contributions of all scales, and saw over 60,000 stories by 2014. These stories not only allow users to find solidarity with others who have experienced similar things to them, but is also an outlet to tell stories which are often silenced by society. Bates argues that society encourages women in particular to ‘brush-off’ and ignore sexist remarks and attitudes made towards them, justifying it as simply ‘normal behaviour’, and so this project is important in enabling people to talk about things that have happened to them. The project has also been useful as an evidence base, as seen in its contribution to Project Guardian, a joint initiative by the British Transport Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, the City of London Police and Transport for London, which aims to reduce sexual harassment on London’s public transport.
Since starting the project, Bates has faced serious criticism from many, extending to include even rape and death threats. This has invaded all aspects of her life, and even forced her to move house and take specific security measures at her wedding. Nonetheless, Bates remains positive, saying that ‘it’s okay, it is awful, but we are changing something’, and suggesting that she gathers hope from the new surge of feminism that is currently going on.
Bates is also a writer for the Guardian’s weekly women’s blog, and released a book in 2014 entitled Everyday Sexism, which attempts to summarise the overwhelming response received by the website, and to spread awareness of the scale of the issue, as well as being a ‘call to arms’ to further encourage people to speak out. In April 2014 she was named as one of Britain’s most influential women by the BBC in their Woman’s Hour Power List.
Watch her powerful Ted Talk here:
Link to the project: http://everydaysexism.com/