Laura Bates, the woman behind the brilliant and important Everyday Sexism website, has called for politicians to re-think sex education ahead of the 2015 election.
Speaking at Hay-on-Wye festival, where she was later met with a standing ovation, she said: ‘We could start looking at issues around gender equality and equality of aspiration and possibility from a really young age. Then, when children are having sex and relationships education, it ought to go hand in hand with what consent is, what they’re protected from under the law in terms of sexual assault, what domestic violence looks like and what’s a healthy relationship.’
Earlier this year, Laura, along with Mumsnet and* The Telegraph*, unsuccessfully lobbied parliament earlier this year in an attempt to amend sex education legislation because what she saw in schools was so poor. ‘Right now there’s none of that,’ she continued at Hay. ‘Sex education should go beyond the bare mechanics: What is rape? What is porn? What is consent? There is some really basic principled stuff that needs to come into the classroom. There's a long way to go, but it's a very important question to be asking ahead of the election.'
And, having a dig around the sex education curriculum, we can sort of see what it’s missing.
With the pervasiveness of the sexism that Laura – and the people submitting stories on her site – experience daily and these horrifying stats on how sexism ends up being ingrained in our culture, surely the government will have to start reconsidering the way children are taught about sex and sexual relationships in school.
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Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.