Eminent women’s rights activists and author from Odisha Manasi Pradhan has been invited by the prestigious Oxford Union to speak as a ‘Guest Speaker’, a honour she will be sharing with great icons like Albert Einstein, Sir Winston Churchill, Malcolm X, US Presidents Reagan, Nixon and Carter, Mother Teresa, Michael Jackson, Maradona, Morgan Freeman who have spoken at the union as ‘Guest Speaker’.
Founded in 1823, the Oxford Union has hosted world leaders in every field, the most recent being British Prime Minister Theresa May and former British PM David Cameroon, former US President Bill Clinton and renowned scientist Stephen Hawking.
The speech at the Oxford Union is televised by BBC, CNN and Russia Today and covered by all major international publications.
Pradhan has been invited as the ‘leading global women’s rights icon’ to share a ‘global vision’ to address the gender inequalities and crime against women that remains a major challenge across the world. She is the founder of Honour for Women National Campaign, a nationwide movement to end violence against women in India.
In 2016, the New York-based ‘Bustle’ magazine named her among 20 most inspiring feminist authors and activists along with Nobel Prize winners Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchu, Malala Yousafzai, Betty Friedan, Naomi Klein, Angela Davis, Kate Millett and Gloria Steinem. In 2017, the los Angeles-based Welker Media Inc. named her among 12 most powerful feminist change-makers across the globe.
Born on October 4, 1962 to a poor family in a remote village of Odisha, Pradhan fought the belief against educating women, walked 15 km daily amidst hilly terrain and swamp to the only high school in the entire region to emerge as the first woman matriculate of her village and the first woman law graduate of her region. Her life story has been adopted as documentaries in the United States and Israel.
