Victoria Bateman

Bateman's academic research focuses on economic history. 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.

In 2016, Bateman attended a Cambridge University Faculty of Economics meeting naked, as a protest against Brexit. She had the words "Brexit leaves Britain naked" written across her torso. On 14 January 2019, Bateman delivered an hour-long lecture against Brexit at the Cambridge Junction while naked, then asked the audience to sign her body as a petition. She was subsequently invited to appear on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, in which she also stripped naked. This led to a naked appearance on Good Morning Britain, although her body was pixelated before broadcast.

In 2014, Bateman commissioned and posed nude for a life-size portrait by Anthony Connolly, which subsequently appeared in the Mall Galleries. Bateman said that the purpose of the painting was to ask questions about the sexualisation of women in modern society. In June 2018, Bateman attended the Gonville and Caius College end of term supervisor dinner wearing a see through body suit, with the words "my body my choice" written on her body. 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. In July 2018, Bateman posted a video on Twitter in which she appeared naked and discussed inequality in economics.

Victoria N. Bateman (née Powell, born 1979) is a British feminist economist and academic, specialising in economic history. She is a fellow in economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is Director of Studies for the Economics Tripos at Gonville and Caius College.