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The Ms. Q&A: Ziauddin Yousafzai's Giving Girls Around the World Every Opportunity a Boy Would Have
“I was encouraging Malala not just to be an educated girl, but to be a girl who is a girl known by her own name.“
Ziauddin Yousafzai is known around the world for being the father of Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. He’s a Pakistani educator and has been advocating for girls education for decades. After Malala survived a Taliban attack for her own activism, Ziauddin joined her in creating the Malala Fund for girls education. He also serves as a United Nations special advisor on global education.
Melanne Verveer: [Malala] is just a remarkable young woman. She often talks about the fact that you were determined to give her every opportunity that a boy would have in your society.
How did you proceed? Did you get questioned by other men in the community where you were living in Pakistan?
Yousafzai: Ah, yes. In the beginning when I was encouraging Malala and not just to be an educated girl, but to be a girl who is a girl known by her own name.
I had five sisters and none of my five sisters had an opportunity to receive education. And at that time, we hardly had any school for girls. But also, my parents did not have any big dream for my sisters. They had very tall dreams for me because I was a boy and for my five sisters, their only dream was to get them married as early as possible. Coming from that patriarchal society, being in that patriarchal family, our people could see the change in my behavior.
I often tell the story—when Malala was born and she was hardly [a] few weeks after her birth—my cousin brought a family tree. And when I looked at the family tree, it was a long list for 400 years and they were all men. I picked up my pen and drew a line from my name, and wrote Malala. I could see the disapproval on his face that he was thinking of me, that I was a crazy man putting a girl name on a family tree.
So these were the things in the beginning that people did not like in me. But once they saw the impact of a girl and or activism, I think, later on [the] same people joined us.
https://msmagazine.com/2020/12/09/the-ms-qa-ziauddin-yousafzai-malala-girls-education/
Ziauddin Yousafzai is known around the world for being the father of Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. He’s a Pakistani educator and has been advocating for girls education for decades. After Malala survived a Taliban attack for her own activism, Ziauddin joined her in creating the Malala Fund for girls education. He also serves as a United Nations special advisor on global education.
Melanne Verveer: [Malala] is just a remarkable young woman. She often talks about the fact that you were determined to give her every opportunity that a boy would have in your society.
How did you proceed? Did you get questioned by other men in the community where you were living in Pakistan?
Yousafzai: Ah, yes. In the beginning when I was encouraging Malala and not just to be an educated girl, but to be a girl who is a girl known by her own name.
I had five sisters and none of my five sisters had an opportunity to receive education. And at that time, we hardly had any school for girls. But also, my parents did not have any big dream for my sisters. They had very tall dreams for me because I was a boy and for my five sisters, their only dream was to get them married as early as possible. Coming from that patriarchal society, being in that patriarchal family, our people could see the change in my behavior.
I often tell the story—when Malala was born and she was hardly [a] few weeks after her birth—my cousin brought a family tree. And when I looked at the family tree, it was a long list for 400 years and they were all men. I picked up my pen and drew a line from my name, and wrote Malala. I could see the disapproval on his face that he was thinking of me, that I was a crazy man putting a girl name on a family tree.
So these were the things in the beginning that people did not like in me. But once they saw the impact of a girl and or activism, I think, later on [the] same people joined us.
https://msmagazine.com/2020/12/09/the-ms-qa-ziauddin-yousafzai-malala-girls-education/