Caroline Criado Perez facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Caroline Criado Perez
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Criado Perez speaking at a Conference of the Open Data Institute in 2019
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Caroline Emma Criado Perez
1984 (age 40–41) Brazil
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| Nationality | British |
| Education | Oundle School |
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| Occupation | Journalist |
Caroline Emma Criado Perez OBE (born 1984) is a British feminist writer, journalist, and activist. She is known for her campaigns that aim to make sure women are fairly represented in society.
One of her first big campaigns, called the Women's Room project, worked to get more female experts featured in the news. She also fought against the removal of the only woman (besides The Queen) from British banknotes. Thanks to her efforts, the Bank of England quickly announced that Jane Austen would appear on the £10 note by 2017. This campaign led to online harassment, which made the social media site Twitter improve how it handles complaints.
Her most recent campaign was for a statue of a woman in Parliament Square in London. The statue of Millicent Fawcett was revealed in April 2018. This happened as part of the celebrations for 100 years since women in the UK first gained the right to vote. In 2019, her book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men became a bestseller.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Caroline Criado Perez was born in Brazil in 1984. Her father, Carlos Criado Perez, was a businessman. Her mother, Alison, was a nurse who worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) on aid missions.
Her family lived in many different countries when she was a child, including Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, and the UK. When Caroline was 11, she started attending Oundle School, a boarding school in England. She didn't like the school, describing it as having a bullying culture.
After a year at university in London, she left her history course. She loved opera and wanted to become an opera singer, working different jobs to pay for singing lessons.
Caroline later worked in digital marketing. She then went back to school as an adult student, studying English Language and Literature at Keble College, Oxford. She graduated from Oxford University in 2012. While studying, she learned about how language and gender are connected. This made her become an active feminist.
In 2012, she was a runner-up in a student writing competition. In 2013, she was working on a master's degree in Gender Studies at the London School of Economics.
Important Campaigns
Women in the Media
In November 2012, Caroline Criado Perez started a website called Women's Room with Catherine Smith. Their goal was to find female professionals and suggest them to journalists. This helped increase the number of women featured in the media.
She believed that the voices heard in public discussions were too limited. She said that if public policy is shaped by the media, then the media should truly represent everyone.
Women on Banknotes
Caroline Criado Perez also spoke out when the Bank of England decided to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on the £5 note. This meant there would be no women (besides the Queen) on the back of British banknotes. She argued that this went against the Equality Act 2010, which says public organizations must prevent discrimination.
Her campaign gained a lot of support, with 35,000 people signing a petition. The new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, then announced that Jane Austen would appear on a new £10 note. Caroline was happy with this choice. She said, "Jane Austen spent her time making fun of the establishment. All her books are about how women are trapped and misrepresented. It is really sad that she was saying that 200 years ago and I am still having to say that today."
In 2017, Caroline said she would donate her first "Austen tenner" (a £10 note with Jane Austen) to a local women's shelter. Many other people followed her example and donated their new £10 notes to charities.
Statue of Millicent Fawcett
On International Women's Day in March 2016, Caroline Criado Perez noticed that all eleven statues in Parliament Square in Westminster were of men. These included Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela.
She started a campaign for a statue of a suffragette (a woman who fought for the right to vote) to be put in Parliament Square. This would be for the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave some women the right to vote. She wrote that only a very small percentage of statues in the UK were of historical women who were not royalty.
She wrote an open letter to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, which was signed by many important women. Khan agreed to the idea. A petition with 74,000 signatures was presented. It was suggested that the statue should be of Millicent Fawcett, a leader who worked for women's voting rights. Caroline agreed.
In April 2017, it was announced that Gillian Wearing would create the statue of Millicent Fawcett. Prime Minister Theresa May also supported the idea. Fawcett is the first woman to have a statue in Parliament Square, and Wearing is the first female sculptor to have a statue there. The statue was revealed on April 24, 2018. On the base of the statue are the names and pictures of 55 women (and 4 men) who fought for women's right to vote.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Caroline Criado Perez wrote the book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men in 2019. The book explains how society often has gender differences because data is collected and used in ways that favor men. It shows how the world is often designed for men, and women's needs are overlooked.
This book has been translated into many languages around the world.
Awards and Honours
For her successful work in getting women on banknotes, Caroline Criado Perez won the human rights campaigner of the year award from the group Liberty in November 2013. In the same year, she was also named one of BBC's 100 Women.
In 2015, she was given the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). This was for her work in promoting equality and diversity, especially in the media. In 2019, she won two more awards for her book Invisible Women: the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Books Prize and the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award.
See also
In Spanish: Caroline Criado Perez para niños
