FEATURE:
Feminist Icons
Laura Bates
_________
EVEN though most of the women…
I will include in this series are activists, writers and have so many disciplines to their name, I wanted to highlight feminist writers. As explained in a previous feature, I do worry that there are very few articles written by men that discuss feminism and the next wave of feminism. Even writing about women’s rights and gender equality. It is very rare. At a time when there should be more togetherness and discussion, it is largely women writing about big issues. There is not even a positive men’s movement, so there does need to be greater activism and involvement from men. In this series, I am looking at incredible writers and feminist voices. As I am reading Fix the System, Not the Women, I wanted to talk about Laura Bates. Bates has written many books. Included are Everyday Sexism (2014), Men Who Hates Women (2020) and the upcoming The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny. I am going to come to that new book to end. I am including interviews with Laura Bates. A remarkable and important writer that everyone should know about. At a moment when dangerous men like Andrew Tate are causing an incredible amount of danger and violence, I am finding new relevance and depth in her writing. How there is this crisis. A rise in sexual violence against women. Misogyny that shows no signs of slowing. I would advise people to buy Fix the System, Not the Women. Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012 to catalogue the spectrum of sexism faced day-to-day by women, from the "niggling and normalised" to "outrageously offensive". In encouraging people to share their stories, the project aimed to show the world that sexism exists in many guises and is a valid problem.
I want to start with a 2023 interview from The Guardian. As they write, Bates is “the author of bestselling nonfiction titles including Misogynation and Men Who Hate Women, as well as novels for teens that grapple with issues such as revenge porn and slut-shaming. Her new YA novel, Sisters of Sword and Shadow, is the first instalment of a pacy duology set in the time of King Arthur, where heroine Cass is destined for an arranged marriage until she joins a mysterious band of female knights”. It is interesting reading her responses to the questions asked:
“Was there a lightbulb moment for you in terms of your awakening as a feminist activist?
In spring 2012 I had a really, really bad week. I was followed home by a guy who was aggressively sexually propositioning me, I was groped on a bus and everybody looked away, and a guy unloading scaffolding turned to another as I was walking down the street and said: “Look at the tits on that!” If those three things hadn’t happened in the same week, I never would have thought twice about any of them because it was so normal.
Coverage of news stories like the Russell Brand allegations can give the impression that things have improved in recent years. Is that misleading?
I find it bizarre that everybody now is pointing to the lads’ mags and Page Three and going: “Well, it was really sexist back then.” Almost as if that condones the allegations. And I just think: have you heard of Andrew Tate? Misogyny has always existed, but the algorithmically facilitated mass radicalisation of young men is lads’ mags on steroids. It’s pumping out extreme misogyny on a scale that we’ve never seen before in terms of reach.
What did you make of how Jenni Hermoso was treated after speaking out against Luis Rubiales’s unsolicited World Cup kiss?
The fact that he came out fighting, and the fact that the Spanish FA threatened to sue her when billions of people had watched it happen, just shows that we haven’t made the progress we like to think we have in terms of everybody recognising what’s wrong. Also, it was really telling that something like 82 of the women players said they wouldn’t play again until Rubiales had gone, and put their careers on the line to stand behind Hermoso, and one male footballer did the same thing.
Bates with Katie Price at the panel debate 'Does Page 3 make the world a better place?' during the 2014 Women of the World festival in London. Photograph: Tim P Whitby/Getty Images
You’re a contributor to Women Under Siege, an online initiative to investigate the use of sexual violence in conflict. How optimistic are you that it can ever be eradicated?
What people don’t realise is that the use of rape as a weapon of war is always connected to cultural sexism and sexist beliefs – it’s such an effective weapon because of the way that women are treated having been raped. One of the big pieces of the puzzle is women being involved in peacemaking, being given political power and authority.
What are we still getting wrong in terms of how we deal with violence against women? Is the phrase itself part of the problem?
It’s symptomatic of the way that we still focus on the victims instead of the perpetrators. As a society, what we find hard to confront is that a woman is probably safer in a short skirt in a dark alleyway, drunk at two in the morning, than she is at home in her pyjamas in her own bed, because 90% of the time the person who’s going to rape her is going to be a partner or friend or colleague.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Evans/The Observer
How do we correct that misconception?
Partly it’s about institutional misogyny, about recognising it as a systemic crisis that needs systemic solutions. But also a cultural shift is needed in the most minor, normalised sexist behaviour and banter. That, I think, is where storytelling comes in – changing people’s mind by changing who we expect to take different roles within those stories and also what a hero looks like, what power looks like.
Are you still receiving death and rape threats online?
Yes. Last year the police reached a point where they basically said the threats were credible but they couldn’t trace them, so they put panic alarms in my house instead, which feels scary and reassuring at the same time.
You’re married. Your husband must worry.
He is extremely calm and extremely supportive. When we were engaged, a men’s rights activist wrote an open letter on the internet that said if my husband went through with marrying me, he would one day come home to find that I had burned down the house, stolen all his money, murdered our children and absconded with a coven of lesbian witches. That didn’t put him off.
Please tell us how you remain hopeful.
There are so many things that give me hope. Women supporting other women – feminism is so often portrayed as catty, divisive, and it’s just not, in my experience – or auditoriums packed with people who are prepared to give up their time for what isn’t an easy conversation; I aways joke that no one wants to invite me to dinner parties. One of the things that I feel really positive about is we now have a generation of teenage girls who are so much more politicised and aware of their rights. It doesn’t mean that they’re not facing absolute shit, but it does mean that they’re a little bit more armed to fight it than we were.
What advice do you have for anyone raising a son?
Talk to them. Don’t think that it has to be one big scary conversation when they’re 16, because it’s too late then. Start when they’re three and someone gives them a truck and their sister a doll – ask why, question it. Give them the tools to think for themselves and talk about internet literacy”.
I want to end with focus around her upcoming book, The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny. That comes out on 15th May. On 9th May, Laura Bates will be speaking about the book at the Southbank Centre. It is a book that you will want to buy. Even though I cannot cover everything Laura Bates has written and said, I wanted to put in these selections to get a better impression of her amazing work. If you have not seen the Everyday Sexism Project website, then you can see their archive here. It is designed to take a step towards gender equality “by proving wrong those who tell women that they can’t complain because we are equal”. Before moving on, as I am reading Fix the System, Not the Women, I wanted to bring in a review from The Guardian:
“Fix the System, Not the Women is an attempt to highlight “the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality” – and to pull apart the myth that women are complicit in our own oppression. Bates’s central message, which she has developed through her Everyday Sexism Project, the online forum that has now received 200,000 stories of sexism and misogyny from all over the world, and books including Girl Up (2016) and Men Who Hate Women (2020), is that there is a spectrum of gender inequality. Sexist jokes and stereotypes are at one end. Rape, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and so-called “honour” killings are at the other. Maternity discrimination, workplace sexual harassment, the gender pay gap “and so much more” lie somewhere in between.
What if, Bates asks, none of it is actually women’s fault? What if women can’t network, mentor, charm, assert and lean in their way out of sexism because this is a system that is rigged against them? A system that relies on its own invisibility for its preservation.
Suggestions for reform include apps that track the movements of men convicted of crimes against women
Bates pursues her thesis across five key areas: education, policing, criminal justice, media and politics. The fact that only a quarter of the Cabinet are women might just explain why working mothers lost their jobs at far higher rates than fathers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and new mothers were forced to give birth alone while pubs were allowed to open.
But the most rousing sections of the book are on male violence and the burden on women to keep themselves safe. When a woman is killed, it is often called “an isolated incident”, and yet a woman is murdered by a man in the UK every three days. Bates is scathing about Priti Patel’s support for an app to log women’s movements, on top of managing all the other gear they are advised to carry. As a society “we cannot stop finding excuses for male violence”, she writes. Despite the increased prominence of feminist campaigns, charges in rape cases are now exactly half what they were in 2015–16. Too often, decisions about whether or not to proceed to trial for rape rely on whether the woman fits the societal profile of the “perfect victim”: ie, those who are “sweet and pretty and innocent and careful and didn’t stray off the path or talk to the wolf”. And also, importantly, white.
Fix the System contains plenty of suggestions for reform, including apps that track the movements of men convicted of crimes against women, and banning non-disclosure agreements that gag staff who have experienced maternity discrimination. Bates also reminds us that if we want to tackle oppression in one sphere, we need to be aware of its overlap with others. Black women are four times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth in the UK, yet rarely see themselves represented in campaigns to reach out to expectant mothers. Disabled women are twice as likely to suffer domestic abuse, but just one in 10 spaces in refuges is accessible to those with physical disabilities.
But Bates is adamant that it’s not her job to find solutions. Hundreds already exist, “ignored and unused” in reports and campaign materials of feminist and civil rights organisations. Which made me wonder: how many men will read Fix the System? In recent years, books such as Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and White Fragility have been bought in huge numbers by white people. Because, as Bates says: “this is not our mess to clean up”. Sadly, I suspect the feminist publishing boom has passed most male readers by”.
There are a couple of new interviews that I want to end with. The first is from The Standard. Laura Bates explained how she wants boys to be raised knowing that they can cry and show their emotions when they need to. That girls can grow up without living in fear. That they do not face abuse and discrimination. We are, as Bates says, far from that at the moment:
“Her upcoming book, “The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny,” is set to be published in May 2025. Bates said she has begun to worry about the effect of AI’s integration into everyday life.
“We are hurtling towards a really seismic shift in terms of really every aspect of our society is on the brink of being transformed by emerging technologies and in particular, artificial intelligence,” Bates said.
In her book, Bates said she discusses the ways in which AI will affect change-making due to its repetitive nature.
“AI tech, and the way in which much of it works, is that it is often trained on existing data sets,” Bates said. “Which means that it is absorbing and learning from our already flawed society, and it then risks re-imbedding and exacerbating the racism and the sexism and the existing inequalities of our current society.”
To mitigate this risk, she said AI must be regulated and that “there has to be oversight” and transparency.
Campaigning for policy changes
Bates, alongside other advocacy groups, contributed to the change in the national curriculum around relationships and sex education through campaigning. According to Anglia Ruskin University, they advocated for an emphasis on consent in the health curriculum and, according to the U.K. Parliament, they also urged the government to not remove feminism from the A-level Politics syllabus.
Bates said a modification to the education system felt necessary to include underrepresented topics.
“In the changes, the policies, it was sexual concern, healthy relationships, LGBTQ+ rights and relationships, gender stereotypes, all of that stuff was added and that was really helpful,” Bates said.
Calling attention to sexual misconduct at schools, Bates said she collected stories from girls who were made victims of sexual assault to reveal to people in power.
“I was able to present the politicians with, you know, 1,000 testimonies of girls about what it feels like, in their own words, to be sexually assaulted at school,” Bates said. “It’s really satisfying to see those first-hand testimonies change policy and change people’s minds.”
However, Bates said there are often times when her hard work falls short in the hands of political representatives.
“It’s frustrating and hard, just how much work goes on behind the scenes for any changes to happen, and how many times you put in the work and the change doesn’t happen,” Bates said. “That’s the reality of campaigning and lobbying.”
She said another challenge to creating impact through policy is the frequent change of individual positions in the government, which delays an outcome.
“You might be working really closely with an education secretary and then, suddenly, overnight as a reshuffle, you have to get to know a whole new person and start to work with them,” Bates said.
To achieve a fulfilling result in change-making, Bates said a joint effort is necessary.
“It’s very much taught me the importance of collaboration and building a strong coalition because if you want to get things done in politics, that’s kind of how to do it,” Bates said.
In 2013, Bates, along with other campaigners, successfully changed Facebook’s policies and training guidelines around spreading misogynistic images and comments. Additionally, Bates said stories of harassment on public transport from the Everyday Sexism Project were used to work with the British Transport Police on Project Guardian, an initiative that overhauled the way the force dealt with sexual offenses on public transport.
“Changing Facebook’s policies on rape and domestic violence content, changing the British Transport policies approach to sexual offenses and seeing the number of reporting and the number of perpetrators who were arrested went up, things like that have been really rewarding,” Bates said.
Inspirations and aspirations
Alongside recognized women like Malala Yousafzai, Gloria Steinem and bell hooks, Bates said she looks up to women “whose names other people don’t know.”
“I’m hugely inspired by the women I’m lucky enough to work with who are real women, who are working kind of at the coalface of sexual violence,” Bates said. “These are women who might be working in domestic abuse shelters, they might be frontline service providers, they might be counselors for women who’ve experienced rape or sexual abuse”.
I am going to end with this interview from We Are the City. The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny is going to be a must-read: “From deepfakes to cyber brothels, this terrifying and timely exposé from the bestselling author of Everyday Sexism and Men Who Hate Women reveals the real and fast-spreading dangers of new, inherently misogynistic techonology and their detrimental effect on gender equality”:
“Why Gender Equality Work is Far From Over
In the UK and beyond, some question whether gender inequality remains a pressing issue. They argue that feminism is outdated, that sexism is a relic of the past, and that initiatives like International Women’s Day are unnecessary. Yet, for those engaged in gender equity work, the evidence tells a very different story.
The Reality Behind the Perception
In reality, women remain significantly under-represented in leadership and decision-making roles. Everywhere from parliament to board rooms, when people are making decisions that impact our lives on a daily basis, they don’t tend to be completely representative of the communities they serve. And the disparity continues across a wide range of fields, from science to art, architecture to engineering.
The Ongoing Impact of Gender Stereotypes
These imbalances stem from deeply ingrained gender norms. From childhood, boys are socialised to believe they must be strong and unemotional, contributing to the stark reality that suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 50. Meanwhile, women face stereotypes that paint them as overly emotional, impacting their career prospects and credibility in professional settings.
These stereotypes translate into real-world workplace challenges. Women’s ideas in meetings are often ignored until repeated by male colleagues. They are frequently assumed to be less senior, passed over for leadership roles, or expected to take on administrative tasks. Gender bias manifests in hiring, promotions, and workplace culture, contributing to persistent gender pay gaps and barriers to advancement.
The Reality of Violence Against Women
In reality, women remain significantly under-represented in leadership and decision-making roles. Everywhere from parliament to board rooms, when people are making decisions that impact our lives on a daily basis, they don’t tend to be completely representative of the communities they serve. And the disparity continues across a wide range of fields, from science to art, architecture to engineering. AI Adoption and Gender Disparities
AI, structural bias and gendered harm
The rise of AI presents a new frontier in gender inequality. With great opportunity comes great risk, and we are already seeing the impact play out, from women being slower adopters of emerging technology, to the ways in which AI can unintentionally re-embed existing inequalities and forms of prejudice within the building blocks of new systems. Across a broad range of applications, from financial assessments to healthcare and recruitment, we are already seeing the consequences of these biases for women and marginalised groups. There are also ways in which emerging technologies are being harnessed by bad actors for deliberate gendered harms, from the use of deepfake technology to create fake pornographic images of women to the use of smart tech by stalkers and domestic abusers.
The Role We Must Play
As AI reshapes society, we have a critical window to intervene and ensure these technologies do not entrench existing inequalities. Governments, policymakers, and tech leaders must prioritise ethical AI development by:
Increasing Female Representation in AI development, academia, and leadership to ensure diverse perspectives shape the future of technology.
Implementing Stronger Regulations to prevent AI from reinforcing bias in recruitment, policing, and finance.
Developing AI Ethics Frameworks that mandate fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithmic decision-making.
Combating Online Abuse by enforcing stricter legal consequences for those who use AI for harassment, coercion, and non-consensual exploitation.
Raising Public Awareness about the real risks AI poses to gender equality and ensuring that conversations about AI safety include the voices of those most affected.
A Call to Action
Gender inequality is not a women’s issue; it affects everyone. The same stereotypes that hold women back also harm men, particularly in mental health. Tackling these issues requires systemic change, not just individual action. Rather than focusing on how women should respond to discrimination, the conversation must shift toward dismantling the structures that allow inequality to persist.
As long as these disparities exist, the fight for gender equality must continue. Recognising and addressing inequality is not about dividing men and women—it is about building a fairer, more inclusive society for all. The work is far from over, and it is up to all of us to ensure meaningful progress”.
For the first part of this regular series that spotlights feminist writers and activists, I was eager to talk about Laura Bates. An author I am reading at the moment, she is one of the most important writers of her generation I feel. If you have not discovered her writing, then do go and check out Laura Bates. An acclaimed and successful writer, I would advise everyone to…
OWN her books.