Conway Hall Ethical Society presents… London Thinks – Shouting Back

With Laura Bates, Caroline Criado-Perez. Chaired by Samira Ahmed.

Two of the UK’s finest feminist firebrands will discuss the evolution of 21st Century feminist campaigning and how to solve the problem of institutionalised sexism in society.

Caroline Criado-Perez is a freelance journalist, broadcaster and feminist campaigner. Co-founder of The Women’s Room, an organisation that campaigns for more women experts in the media, she also started and ran the high-profile Keep Women on Banknotes campaign. Gathering stories from athletes in Iran and prostitutes in Merseyside to students in China and doctors in Portugal. She shows how women are taking positive, practical steps to challenge injustice or inequality, and change their world. While some of these stories (the Everyday Sexism campaign and the Pink Sari gang) are already known, the majority of the stories here have not yet been told, and demand to be heard.

The Everyday Sexism Project was founded by writer and activist Laura Bates in April 2012. It started out as a website where people could share their experiences of daily, normalised sexism, from street harassment to workplace discrimination to sexual assault and rape. Despite having no funding or advertising, it quickly became a viral sensation, attracting international press attention, and putting the problem of sexism and gender imbalance firmly on the international media agenda, helping to spark a new wave of feminism in the UK. Laura Bates talks about her experiences, the offline projects, such as working in schools and universities, the collaboration with the British Transport Police and the tricky business of being a woman with an online and public profile.

The event will be chaired by Samira Ahmed.

Samira has worked as a News Correspondent and a reporter on the Today programme and Newsnight, where she was one of the first broadcast journalists to investigate the rise of Islamic radicalism on British university campuses in the early 1990s.

Samira has also worked as a news anchor for BBC World and for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin, and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Independent and The Big Issue.

Tickets: £15 Standard Advance. £5 Conway Hall Ethical Society Members. Please book your tickets using the Eventbrite booking link below.

Doors & Reception: 18:30. Start: 19:30. Ends: 21:30

London Thinks is Conway Hall Ethical Society’s monthly discourse on the big issues and problems of society in our age.

Facebook event here.