Victoria N. Bateman (née Powell, born 1979) is a British feminist economist and academic, specialising in economic history.
She read economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge,[3] and went on to receive master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford.
Her 2019 book The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich argues that women's rights and freedoms were a key factor enabling the industrial and economic development of the West, by boosting wages, skills, saving and entrepreneurial spirit, and helping to produce a democratic and capable state.
"[8] In 2014, Bateman commissioned and posed nude for a life-size portrait by Anthony Connolly, which subsequently appeared in the Mall Galleries.
[11] Bateman is an advocate of the recognition by economists of the economic value of the sex trade and the right of women to earn their living by prostitution.
[20] On 14 January 2019, Bateman delivered an hour-long lecture against Brexit at the Cambridge Junction while naked,[21] then asked the audience to sign her body as a petition.
[25] Bateman has written regular economics commentary for Unherd,[26] Bloomberg View[27] and CapX,[28] has contributed articles to The Guardian, Times Higher Education, The Conversation and The Telegraph and has appeared on a number of BBC Radio 4 programmes.