Our host Vick Hope is joined by feminist campaigner Laura Coryton.
Laura Coryton is a feminist campaigner and the founder of Sex Ed Matters. In 2014, she led the petition ‘Stop Taxing Periods’ to end tampon tax, which gained over 300,000 signatures and support from major political figures including Barack Obama. The campaign successfully lobbied the government to abolish the tax in 2021, before which they established the ‘Tampon Tax Fund’, through which almost £100 million pounds was donated to female-focused charities. Laura is an Obama Foundation European Leader and stood in the 2024 parliamentary election as the Labour Party candidate in Richmond Park. Her first book Speak Up! was published in 2019 and aims to inspire the next generation of female voices. Laura regularly speaks at schools about the experience and challenges of being a female campaigner, to advise and empower girls who might want to start their own campaigns or get involved with politics
Listen to the full episode here and read on to discover Laura’s five most influential books by women.
I’m actually also a twin, so that resonated. And it just really shows the power of sisterhood in allowing you to be more than you would otherwise have been able to imagine that you could be. And that’s what my twin does for me, or did for me back then, and now it’s also what my other friends and support group do for me today. I think it’s the importance of working with other people to create something bigger which I think is such an important message for young readers.
I kind of see this book as the adult Double Act! It’s the same message. You hardly ever see such strong female friendship and what that can do to your world and how that can really change your life so dramatically.
It articulates the frustrations of the world that I see a lot of in everyday life but haven’t really known how to describe since reading this book. I think [reading it is] tied to the Tampon Tax campaigning in that there’s so much about the world that’s frustrating and that we want to change and it can feel so overwhelming, but then just focusing on that one thing that you can change and pulling the levers of power that you do have access to, even if they’re very localised or seemingly small, and seeing the change that focusing on that one aspect can really make.
I just love her, she writes with such love and compassion and open-mindedness and such consideration. If there’s one person that people listening to this haven’t read that we’ve spoke about today, I would definitely recommend bell hooks.
This book made the world make so much more sense to me. Thinking about sexism as something that has been with us for centuries really helps to make those everyday experiences of sexism make more sense, and also to have a look at the way things have changed. Changemakers throughout the centuries have really inspired changes that we feel, see and experience today, which makes me feel more inspired to maybe create some change for the next generation as well and pass that on.
