Laura Bates

Laura Bates
BEM FRSL
Bates in 2014
Born
Laura Carolyn Bates

(1986-08-27) 27 August 1986 (age 40)
Oxford, England
EducationKing's College, Taunton
University of Cambridge
Spouse
Nick Taylor
​
(m. 2014)​
Writing career
SubjectFeminism
Notable works
Notable awardsBritish Empire Medal
Websitewww.laurabates.co.uk Edit this at Wikidata

Laura Carolyn Bates (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.

Education and early life

External videos
video icon Everyday sexism: Laura Bates at TEDxCoventGardenWomen, TEDx Talks, 16:05, 17 January 2014
External videos
video icon 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. 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. She was privately educated at King's College, Taunton, and subsequently studied English literature at University of Cambridge where she was an undergraduate student at St John's College and graduated in 2007.

Career

After graduating, Bates remained in Cambridge for two and a half years as a researcher for psychologist Susan Quilliam, who was working on an updated edition of The Joy of Sex. Bates then worked as an actor 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.

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

After Everyday Sexism, Bates published several more books about sexism. Bates has said that she has faced abuse online in relation to these projects. 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.

Bates is a contributor to The Guardian, The Independent, the Financial Times, and other publications. She is a contributor to the New York–based Women Under Siege Project.

Honours and awards

Publications

Personal life

Bates married Nick Taylor in 2014.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Anon (2025). "Bates, Laura Carolyn". Who's Who (177th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 2720. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U281470. ISBN 9781399411837. OCLC 1427336388. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ Bates, Laura (16 April 2013). "The Everyday Sexism Project: a year of shouting back". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
  3. 1 2 Haworth, Sacha (January 2015). "Everyday Sexism". Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. 41 (1): 37–37. doi:10.1136/jfprhc-2014-101134. ISSN 1471-1893.
  4. 1 2 3 Betts, Hannah (12 April 2014). "Rape Threats, Groping and Perverts – Everyday Sexism: Why Laura Bates Is Shouting Back". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  5. 1 2 "Laura Bates". Anglia Ruskin University. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
  6. ↑ Bergin, Clare (12 December 2016). "Woman of the Week: Laura Bates". Her Campus. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
  7. 1 2 Hines, Sophie (5 December 2013). "Laura Bates Wins Ultimate New Feminist 2013". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
  8. ↑ "BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Power List 2014 – Top Ten Revealed: 9. Laura Bates, Campaigner". BBC. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  9. ↑ Sanghani, Radhika (16 April 2015). "A Day in the Life of the Everyday Sexism Hashtag". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. ↑ "Laura Bates". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  12. ↑ "Laura Bates". The Independent. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  13. ↑ "Laura Bates". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
  14. ↑ "Laura Bates". Women Under Siege Project. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  15. ↑ "Who are the 100 Women 2014?". BBC News. 26 October 2014. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  16. ↑ United Kingdom: "No. 61256". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 2015. p. B28.
  17. ↑ Davies, Caroline (12 June 2015). "Queen's Birthday Honours List: Knights Outnumber Dames Five to One". The Guardian.
  18. ↑ Flood, Alison (28 June 2018). "Royal Society of Literature Admits 40 New Fellows to Address Historical Biases". the Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  19. ↑ "Honorary Fellows". St John's College, Cambridge. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
  20. ↑ Strick, Katie (8 March 2022). "International Women's Day: 22 amazing London women changing the world in 2022". Evening Standard. Retrieved 15 April 2026.
  21. ↑ Bates, Laura (28 June 2014). "How to Have a Feminist Wedding". The Guardian. London.