Published in 2018
320 pages
6 hours and 40 minutes
Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of gender inequality, with branches in 25 countries worldwide. Laura writes regularly for the Guardian, Telegraph and the New York Times amongst others and won a British Press Award for her journalism in 2015.
She works closely with politicians, businesses, schools, police forces and organisations from the Council of Europe to the United Nations to tackle gender inequality. She was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to gender equality in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2015 and has been named woman of the year by Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine.
Laura is a contributor at Women Under Siege, a New York-based project tackling rape in conflict worldwide and she is patron of SARSAS, Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support. She is the recipient of two honorary degrees, an honorary fellow of St John’s College Cambridge and was awarded the Internet and Society Award by the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners Lee. Laura is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Vice President of the Hay Festival. She has judged the Women’s Prize, the YA Book Prize, the Children’s Laureate and the RSL Giles St Aubyn awards for non-fiction.
What is this book about?
Laura Bates, pioneering feminist, activist and bestselling author, has given voice to hundreds of thousands of women through her international Everyday Sexism Project. Drawing attention to both hidden and blatant sexist acts and attitudes, Laura has exposed the startling truth behind misogyny in our society: systemic, ingrained and ignored.
From Weinstein to Westminster, a torrent of allegations of sexual harassment and assault have left us reeling. One hundred years since some women were first given the right to vote, we are still struggling to get to grips with the true extent of gender inequality that continues to flourish in our society.
In this collection of essays, originally published in the Guardian, Laura Bates uncovers the sexism that exists in our relationships, our workplaces, our media, in our homes and on our streets, but which is also firmly rooted in our lifelong assumptions and in the actions and attitudes we explain away, defend and accept. Often dismissed as one-offs, veiled as ‘banter’ or described as ‘isolated incidents’, Misogynation joins the dots to reveal the true scale of discrimination and prejudice women face.
A bold, witty and incisive analysis of current events, Misogynation makes a passionate argument for stepping back, opening our eyes and allowing ourselves to see the bigger picture.