“Just because your gender is different that does not mean that you should be treated differently”.
Education activist Malala Yousafzai says she loved to play cricket as a girl, but that boys wouldn’t throw the ball to her the same way they did to each other.
“As a girl, I loved to play cricket with my friends and brothers. But I noticed that boys would throw a slower ball to me, assuming girls were afraid to hit a fastball,” Malala wrote on Instagram.
She said she would always shout back at these boys and told them to throw the ball like they would if she were a boy.
The Nobel laureate spoke about the importance of sports. For her, playing sports helped give her the boldness to be competitive and resilient in her fight for girls’ education and equality.
The young Pakistani education activist turned 24 years old last week.
Born in Mingora, Pakistan, in 1997, Malala has been speaking up for girls’ education since 2008 when the Taliban had banned girls from going to school in the Swat district.
Malala rose to fame after the Taliban attacked her in 2012 for campaigning for girls’ education in her village despite the ban. The then-teenager was shot in the face, after which she was rushed to the hospital. The government of Pakistan later sent her to the United Kingdom for further treatment.
Since the attack, Malala has been living in the UK. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford last year.
The teenager gathered public attention from media across the globe and has given numerous interviews in newspapers and television shows since her near-death experience. She is also the co-founder of her non-profit organization, Malala Fund.
