BBC has a list of 100. Financial Times has just 25. But writing from an Indian perspective, viewing India from within, who were the women who made the most impact? Who were those who would not give up whatever it took? And who are the changemakers to remember? These are the women, from India and the rest of the world, who moved me this year.
Gisele Pelicot: Breaking the silence
By refusing the anonymity allowed to her as a rape survivor under French law, the 72-year-old grandmother is challenging the narrative on how we talk about rape. “It is not for us to have shame—it’s for them,” she famously told the court.
But Pelicot has also forced the world to confront the grotesque reality of sexual violence. In a world where rape conviction rates range from 6% (France) to 27% (India), she is forcing us to ask why the world isn’t more concerned about justice for rape victims. She is telling us also to look at men who rape—not monsters lurking in dark alleyways but ordinary men, the firefighter, the journalist, the plumber, the guy who lives next door. And she is reminding us that for some women the most unsafe place is inside their own homes.
For making us look, Gisele Pelicot is rightfully a hero not just in France but all over the world.
[Read more here: How Gisele Pelicot is changing the way we talk about rape]
Bilkis Bano: No backing down
For refusing to give up through 22 years of trauma following the murder of her family members, including an infant daughter, her mother and her sister, and her own gang-rape in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Bilkis has remained steadfast in her pursuit of justice despite a system stacked against her. When the men convicted of their crimes were sentenced to life imprisonment and then, shockingly, released for “good behaviour” on Independence Day, 2022, Bilkis went back to court. In January this year, the Supreme Court ordered the men back into jail where they belong.
Women in Cinema Collective: United stand
In 2017, an actress was sexually assaulted in a moving car in Kochi while she was returning home from work. It led to 18 angry women setting up the WCC, the first of its kind body in any film industry in India. It was at WCC’s insistence that the government set up a task force headed by a retired judge to look into working conditions in the Malayalam film industry. It was WCC’s persistence that forced the state government to finally release the Justice K Hema report (submitted in 2019) earlier this year.
Despite the redactions, the report sent shock waves throughout the Malayalam film industry with its findings of rampant sexual exploitation: Those who don’t comply find themselves out of work. There is no forum for redressal. What makes the WCC’s stand remarkable is its determination to change the status quo, shedding light on a workplace culture where sexual abuse is normalized. Their activism has come at a cost. Its members remain “banned from cinema because they openly stated undesirable things,” justice Hema noted.
Francesca Albanese: The conscience keeper
There is no equivocation in the stand of UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel’s actions in systematically erasing Palestinian life in Gaza is the very definition of genocide, says the Italian human rights lawyer. There is none of the western media’s calibrated balancing act of referencing Hamas’s horrific terrorist strike of October 7, 2023. The reaction by Israeli Defence Forces has been grotesquely disproportionate, its worst price extracted from the most vulnerable women and children who account for half of the 45,028 killed and 106,962 wounded in the 14-month war, according to the Gaza health ministry.
But for the stand by Albanese, the ongoing atrocities in the Gaza strip would have been seen as a nation’s right to self-defense. She continues to lobby with the European Union to cut trade ties with Israel. The International Court of Justice has issued arrest warrants for war crimes against Benjamin Netanyahu. She asks the international community: At what point do we say enough
Vinesh Phogat: Unbroken
She was on a roll: Battling the wrestling federation head accused of sexual assault, leading an unprecedented public protest on the streets, waging a court case, undergoing two knee surgeries and rehab, and securing a quota spot for India at the Paris Olympics. Then came the shock disqualification at the brink of the Olympic final where she was assured a silver if not a gold. Felled by just 100gm above the 50kg category she was competing in, it was game over for a heart-broken Vinesh who announced her retirement from wrestling.
In September came the news that she had joined the Congress party. She contested the Haryana assembly election from Julana in Jind district and, yes, she won.
Yulia Navalnaya: Keeper of her husband’s legacy
In an interview she once said her main job was to look after her two children and home. But the shock death of her husband Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic penal colony in February seemed to leave the 47-year-old Yulia with no choice but to take on a more public role, starting with her stunning address to the European Parliament where, amidst a standing ovation, she refused to shed a tear saying she would not give her husband’s enemies that satisfaction.
She has sworn to continue her husband’s work, keep fighting for a free Russia, to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for her husband’s death.
Simone Biles: Redemption
What makes the diminutive gymnast a role model is not the number of medals (11 Olympic and 30 world championships). It’s not just the grace with which she wins, acknowledging rivals like Rebeca Andrade of Brazil as someone who keeps her on her toes. It’s not just that at 27, she continues to compete. Or even that she is able to execute difficult skills, including the Biles II.
Biles is that rare athlete who combines athleticism, skill, grace and courage. Courage in speaking up against coach and sexual abuser Larry Nassar. And courage in articulating her mental health struggles that resulted in her withdrawal from the Tokyo Olympics.
Payal Kapadia: Shining a light all over the world
Ever since it began the festival rounds, All we Imagine as Light, an exquisitely told story about the friendship of three women, has been making waves. It was the first Indian movie to win the Grand Prix at Cannes in May. It’s #1 on New York Times film critic Manohla Darghis’s best films of 2024. And earlier this week, Kapadia became the first Indian woman to be nominated for a Golden Globes best director. Her film has also made it to the best motion picture (non-English language).
Incidentally, Light isn’t the 38-year-old’s first film. A documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing looked at inter-caste relationships against the backdrop of the student protest against the appointment of TV actor turned politician Gajendra Chauhan as the head of Film and Television Institute of India where Kapadia was a student and, reportedly, active protestor.
Controversially, Light was ignored for the Oscars by the Film Federation of India who chose to pick Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies over it.
The following article is an excerpt from this week’s HT Mind the Gap. Subscribe here.
