Keynote SpeakersLaura Bates is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.
The Everyday Sexism Project is an ever-increasing collection of over 250,000 testimonies of gender inequality.
Her books include:
- Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year)
- Girl Up (The Sunday Times Bestseller)
- Fix the System, Not the Women
Laura writes regularly for the New York Times, Guardian, and others and is a frequent media commentator and consultant for TV productions tackling issues of gender inequality.
Laura Bates works closely with politicians, businesses, schools, and organisations, from the Council of Europe to the United Nations, to increase equality and diversity.
Her work also covers the growing business case for addressing gender inequality and misogyny in the workplace (recognising that tackling these issues greatly improves performance and productivity).
Laura’s campaigning alongside other activists has received huge praise and success, including:
- Persuading Facebook to change its policies on rape and domestic abuse content.
- Putting sexual consent and healthy relationships on the school curriculum.
- Improving how the British Transport Police respond to incidents of sexual violence.
She has been described as one of the leading voices of fourth-wave feminism.
In recognition of her work, Laura was awarded a British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, participated in President Obama’s White House Summit on the United State of Women, and has been named Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine, and The Sunday Times Magazine.
She was also named on the Woman’s Hour Power List and was one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women.
Laura is an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Laura Bates Gender Equality Speaker:
As a keynote speaker, Laura Bates has addressed some of the world’s biggest companies, including Google, the World Trade Organisation, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, EY, and UBS.
Her keynote topics include, but are not limited to:
Everyday Sexism at Work
Exploring the reality of gender inequality across our society and looking at how it manifests itself in young people’s lives.
Tackling issues such as intersecting injustice, media sexism, toxic masculinity, political inequality, gender stereotypes and sexual consent. Examining questions like ‘what is sexual harassment?’
Everyday Sexism at Work
As mentioned above, Laura also offers talks for students, training for teachers, and presentations for parents, all to highlight the vital role young people can play in creating a more equal future.
Workplace Equality
Starting with a contextual framework of the broader picture of gender inequality across politics, media, STEM, culture and the scale of violence against women in our society before zooming in to look at how these issues manifest themselves uniquely within the workplace.
Exploring the complexity of workplace harassment and discrimination, the ways it intersects with other forms of prejudice such as racism and homophobia and the barriers to reporting.
Highlighting the business case for tackling the problem and suggesting robust and actionable solutions from both an organisational and individual perspective.
Male Allyship
Workshops focused on what men can do to help—against a broader backdrop of societal gender imbalance, exploring how stereotypes and expectations present challenges to men as well as women and deconstructing some of the myths and misconceptions that might prevent men from being part of positive change.
An active look at practical, positive action male allies can take to shift stereotypes, support survivors and create change in their own sphere.
Incels and Extremist Misogyny
A journey inside the secretive online world of the ‘manosphere’, lifting the lid on over 2 years of undercover research, infiltrating communities from incels and men’s rights activists to pickup artists and ‘men going their own way’.
A comprehensive overview of this little-understood form of extremism, including a close examination of radicalisation and recruitment techniques, particularly impacting vulnerable young people, and some of the ways in which teachers, parents and law enforcement can recognise potential red flags and play a positive role in supporting young people who might be at risk.
