Published: 22 April 2013
Region: Worldwide
Laura Bates founded Everyday Sexism Project with the idea of providing a talking point for her friends and hoped that some of them might have stories to share in 2012. A year later, this website had compiled some 25.000 comments and spread to 15 countries.
“It spread like wildfire, as more and more women began to add their experiences – women of all ages and backgrounds, from all over the world. A seven-year-old disabled girl and a 74-year-old wheelchair user recorded almost identical experiences of shouted jibes about ‘female drivers’,” explains Laura in The Guardian.
The Everyday Sexism Project collects instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis to show that sexism still exists in abundance and that is very far from being a problem that we no longer need to discuss.
Laura found increasingly difficult to talk about sexism, equality and women’s rights in a modern society that is perceived as a society that has achieved gender equality. “In this ‘liberal’, ‘modern’ age, to complain about everyday sexism or suggest that you are unhappy about the way in which women are portrayed and perceived renders you likely to be labelled ‘uptight’, ‘prudish’, a ‘militant feminist’, or a ‘bra burner’”.
Everyday Sexism Project started to denounce sexism in the UK but women in another countries asked Laura if they could start a version of the project in their country because it was desperately needed. So, women from the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Germany, Austria and France have all volunteered to moderate the local content.
Some of the stories that can be found in the website are the experiences for example of a schoolgirl who reported being pressured and pestered for sex, a reverend in the Church of England who was repeatedly asked if there was a man available to perform the wedding or funeral service and a girl in Pakistan who described hiding sexual abuse for the sake of “family honour”.
