New Delhi: Every year, International Day of Girl Child is celebrated on October 7 and this year marks the 10th anniversary of this celebration. The purpose of the day is to raise awareness regarding gender equality and equal opportunity for girls.
Even today, female children in our society face a lot, including those relating to education, nutrition, basic rights, medical care, violence against women, and forced child marriage.
There are many places in the globe where prejudice against women remains rampant. In this context, here are some motivational speakers and social activists who have been vocal about girls’ rights and women-centric issues.
1. Malala Yousafzai:
Malala Yousafzai, an activist from Pakistan, campaigns for the rights of girls and women to education. She, along with her father has established the Malala Fund to help girls obtain free education. She has made great progress in ensuring that women and girls throughout the world have access to education. She believes in the importance of education as she once said, “One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world. I truly believe the only way we can create global peace is through not only educating our minds but our hearts and our souls.”
She was shot by the Taliban, yet she says that she does not feel any anger towards the Talib who shot her as she believes in forgiving others. She once said that, if she hit the Talib, there would be no difference between her and the Talib.
2. Adhunika Prakash:
Breastfeeding Support for Indian Mothers was founded and led by Adhunika Prakash (BSIM). It is a Facebook community with members from all over the world, including India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. She maintains a network of over 1,35,000, people as of March 2021, to help them along their breastfeeding journey. She leads a team of 20+ self-motivated people that work together to empower nursing mothers by providing them with support and knowledge throughout their breastfeeding experience.
She has also received the #WebWonderWomen award from the Ministry of Women and Child Development from Smt. Maneka Gandhi and the Outlook Poshan Award from the hands of the Hon. Vice President of India - Shri Venkaiah Naidu. Apart from that, she has co-authored a book, 'The Shakti Awakening' which was an International Bestseller.
3. Sonal Kapoor:
Sonal Kapoor is the CEO of the Protsahan Foundation, which works to heal and transform those who have experienced or are at risk of experiencing abuse by introducing an empathy-based system called HEART (Holistic Healing, Education, Art Intervention, Training, Recovery, and Technology). Sonal's work also includes developing preventative care models with an emphasis on ecological effects.
Her works are mostly centred around helping girls aged 10 to 19 years old in order to provide a safer environment for the vulnerable by increasing access to education, healthcare, gender justice, healing, and care. She also actively engages students and institutions all around the world in discussions about social impact and business, as well as her work with disadvantaged children.
4. Tasleema Nasrin:
Taslima Nasrin is a writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist of Bangladeshi and Swedish origin. She is well-known for her articles on women's oppression and religious critique. She publishes, lectures, and campaigns to increase support for secular humanism, free thought, gender equality, and human rights. She is supposed to have faced abuse during her adolescence and years later she got a job as a gynaecologist, these instances influenced her greatly in writing against the alleged oppression of women in Islam and against religion in general.
Her writing is distinguished by two interconnected elements: her fight with her own culture and her feminist thought.
5. Trisha Shetty:
Trisha Shetty founded the youth-led organization-SheSays which works to improve gender equality via a multifaceted strategy. The organization works to empower them as agents of social change in order to accomplish the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with the goal of eradicating gender-based discrimination and advancing women's rights in India.
Shetty is renowned for her work in the field of human rights advocacy, particularly in the areas of quality education, youth and gender representation, gender-sensitive policies and laws, and the prevention of sexual assault in India.