Women Can and Do: Ad Campaign Spotlights Global Woman Leaders

In 2002, Mukhtar Mai was gang raped in Pakistan on the orders of a village tribunal. This was meant as punishment for her 12-year-old brother's alleged crime of holding hands with a girl of a higher caste, intended to shame and silence their family. But Mai broke with tradition and went public, defying victim-shaming, winning justice against her attackers, and inspiring countless other women. She went on to build schools in her village, a domestic violence shelter, and a legal aid clinic.

Now, Mai's story is part of a "Women Can and Do" advertising campaign. Beginning this month, magazines will be running advertisement highlighting the struggles and achievements of women around the world. The campaign is part of a larger effort around International Women's Day by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, which "identifies, trains, and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe." In conjunction with the Avon Foundation, Vital Voices is hosting a week of IWD events, which began this morning when the ad campaign was unveiled at the New York Stock Exchange.

The series of ad spotlights Danielle Saint-Lot, who has organized relief efforts in the wake of the Haiti earthquake; Rebecca Lolosoli, the director of an Kenyan artisan community where women can be self-sufficient, safe from abuse, and work together to fight female genital mutilation and child marriage; Roli Dashti, one of the first women to be elected to Parliament in Kuwait; Chouchou Namegabe, a radio journalist who reports on the ravages of war and rape as a weapon in the Congo; and Mukhtar Mai. Each of these women have inspiring stories of empowerment, and I would be happy to see their faces and those stories in any magazine I read.

Photo credit: Vital Voices