The Lady Magazine

17 October 2014

Last week, a Birmingham-based teenager named Malala Yousafzai was awarded one of the world’s great honours: the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala grew up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where she campaigned to get more young girls into school. For her troubles, the Taliban shot her in the head. Thanks to the eff orts of surgeons in Birmingham, she beat the odds to survive and now lives in the city from where she continues to be an inspirational voice against prejudice and extremism. At just 17, Malala is already a truly extraordinary individual. But around the world, millions of brave, ordinary women play a similarly inspiring role in their homes, their neighbourhoods, their nations. Last year, after a visit to Afghanistan, I wrote a piece in this magazine about a woman named Bibi, Helmand Province’s most senior female police offi cer. She had braved unimaginable odds to get where she was – ‘One of my cousins informed the Taliban that I am in the police,’ she told me. ‘After that, they came and stole some of my land. It is very dangerous now’ – and she faced the inevitable dangers with defi ance. Just months after our meeting, however, this bold, 37-year-old mother of three was shot dead on her way to work. It is a reminder that Bibi, Malala and the countless other women, both at home and abroad, who battle to make their communities better, safer places to live, should never be far from our thoughts.