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Caroline Criado-PerezBritish feminist, activist and journalist
Date of Birth: .
Country:  Great Britain |
Content:
- Early Life and Education
- Activism and Journalism
- Campaigns
- Millicent Fawcett Statue
- Awards and Recognition
- Liberty's Human Rights Campaigner of the Year (2013)
Early Life and Education
Carolina Criado Perez was born in Brazil to an Argentinian businessman and an English nurse. Her childhood was spent in various countries, including the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Taiwan. At the age of 11, Criado Perez was sent to Oundle School, a private boarding school in England. She has described the school's atmosphere as a "bullying culture."
Activism and Journalism
Criado Perez left Oundle School after a year and briefly studied history at the University of Westminster before dropping out. She pursued a career in classical opera, taking private singing lessons. After working in digital marketing, she enrolled as a mature student at Keble College, Oxford, where she earned a degree in English Literature in 2012. Exposure to feminist works and the teachings of linguist Deborah Cameron sparked Criado Perez's interest in gender issues.
In 2012, Criado Perez co-founded the website "Women's Room" with Catherine Smith. The site aimed to increase the visibility of female experts in the media. The impetus for the platform was a series of BBC Radio 4 programs on teenage pregnancy and breast cancer that featured no female experts and only male interviewers.
Campaigns
Women on BanknotesCriado Perez criticized the Bank of England's decision to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on the £5 note. Condemning Churchill as "another old white man," Criado Perez argued that the Equality Act 2010 required public bodies to "eliminate discrimination," and that evidence of the Bank's "due diligence" was lacking since details of the decision-making process had not been made public. Criado Perez met with officials from the Bank to discuss the issue.
Her petition, which garnered nearly 35,000 signatures and financial backing for a potential legal challenge, led to then-Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney announcing that Jane Austen would replace Churchill on the new £10 note.
Millicent Fawcett Statue
On International Women's Day 2016, Criado Perez highlighted the absence of any female statues in Westminster's Parliament Square. Eleven statues, including Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, were dedicated to men.
She launched a campaign to have a statue of a suffragette erected by the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918. "In a fair world, women who are not part of the monarchy would make up more than the pitiful 2.7 percent of all statues in the UK," she wrote in the New Statesman. An open letter to Sadiq Khan, the newly elected Mayor of London, published in The Daily Telegraph the following May was signed by a number of prominent women. Khan soon expressed his support for the initiative. A petition with 74,000 signatures was presented by Criado Perez at a meeting organized by the Fawcett Society.
In April 2017, Sadiq Khan announced that the statue commission would be awarded to sculptor Gillian Wearing; Prime Minister Theresa May endorsed the decision. The monument was unveiled on 24 April 2018. The statue's plinth bears the names of 55 women (and four men) who campaigned for women's suffrage.
Awards and Recognition
Criado Perez has received numerous awards and honors for her activism, including:
Liberty's Human Rights Campaigner of the Year (2013)
BBC's 100 Women (2013)Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) (2015)
Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize (2019)
Financial Times Business Book of the Year (2019)
Invisible Women
Criado Perez's 2019 book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and Financial Times Business Book of the Year, as well as the McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Professors Cordelia Fine and Victor Sojo of the Lancet describe the book as "a series of fascinating case studies in areas including medicine, occupational hygiene and safety, transport, technology, politics, and disaster relief."
