Global Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
The One Billion Rising movement provides a clear example of how feminist activists from different parts
of the world can become a truly global force, fighting a transnational problem like gender-based violence
—including rape, intimate partner violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, and sex trafficking
—that affects all women and girls. Such activism is greatly advanced by the new, Web-based technologies
that permit immediate communication between individuals and groups, coordination of efforts, and
broadcasting of outcomes. But these new technologies also help to facilitate and publicize many local
efforts—by both community organizations and transnational NGOs—to change the practices in a
particular country or region. Some examples of the diverse range of activist projects in the early twenty-
first century include: women in Saudia Arabia driving cars to protest their country’s de facto ban against
female drivers; Pussy Riot, the punk rock, guerrilla-style activist group, using music to fight sexism and
homophobia in Russia; feminist bloggers in Egypt using self-made videos to challenge sexism and to
place women’s rights at the center of the “Arab Spring” movement for democracy; members of the
European group Femen protesting topless at the Spanish Parliament to challenge restrictions on abortion
rights; Young Feminists Movement Namibia, or Y-Fem, working for comprehensive sex education through
its Facebook group; and activists in Ciudad Juárez raising international awareness of the record number
of rapes, murders, and disappearances of young women in their Mexican border city. Feminism in the
twenty-first century, aided by technology, has become more global, in the sense that activists can work
toward a shared goal that crosses borders, and more international, in the sense that activists can gain
knowledge of the feminist issues that define specific nations.
Perhaps no one better symbolizes the future of feminism than Malala Yousafzai, the young feminist
activist from Pakistan. Yousafzai was an eleven-year-old Muslim schoolgirl when she first came to public
attention in early 2009 for her blog, written under a pseudonym for the BBC’s Web site, which detailed
her life under Taliban rule and her opposition to the Taliban’s closing of schools for girls. Although she
was just a young girl, her intelligence, charisma, and public speaking skills quickly identified her as a
natural leader, and she soon gained international attention as an inspiring activist in a country where only
40 percent of women over the age of fifteen can read and write.^93 Encouraged and inspired by her father,
who had long championed the rights of girls to an education, Yousafzai was profiled in a 2009 New York
Times–produced documentary entitled Class Dismissed about the closing of girls’ schools in Pakistan’s
Swat Valley, and in 2011 she was nominated by the KidsRights Foundation for its International Children’s
Peace Prize. It was only a short time before Yousafazi’s public stand against the Taliban made her a
target. In October 2012, a Taliban assassin jumped onto her school bus, demanding to know “Which one
is Malala?” He then shot Yousafzai in the head. Gravely injured and in a coma, Yousafzai was transported
to the United Kingdom, where she received medical care and months of rehabilitation, ultimately
surviving the assassination attempt without any permanent brain damage. Unable to return to Pakistan
because of threats against her life, Yousafzai has continued her fight for girls’ rights and has become
internationally known for her human rights work, becoming the youngest person in history to be nominated
for a Nobel Peace Prize. In her 2013 speech before the United Nations Youth Delegation, upon being
awarded the UN’s Children’s Peace Prize, she spoke of receiving her inspiration from the nonviolent
movements led by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. As she said at the UN,
“Today I am focusing on women’s rights and girls’ education because they are suffering the most. There
was a time when women social activists asked men to stand up for their rights. But, this time, we will do
it by ourselves. I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women’s rights[,] rather I am focusing