Abstract
This article analyses the extensive coverage in UK newspapers of the shooting, recovery and activism of Malala Yousafzai, the prominent campaigner for girls’ rights from the Swat Valley in Pakistan. The study uses discourse analysis and a poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial approach to analyse 223 newspaper articles, identifying the dominant discourses about Yousfzai in the context of the United Kingdom’s colonial history and perceptions of its current role in global politics. The article demonstrates that the UK media’s representation of Yousafzai’s story embraces and reproduces seemingly emancipatory discourses around girls’ education, yet is ultimately limited by enduring gendered and orientalist discourses that underlie these new initiatives, which are simultaneously produced by, and productive of, unequal power relations. Despite Yousafzai’s courageous campaigning, these discourses still make it easier for UK journalists to label her the ‘shot Pakistani girl’ than to call her powerful, a survivor or indeed a feminist.
Highlights
I am focusing on women’s rights and education because they are suffering the most
It is astonishing that in an article aimed at showing that Malala Yousafzai will be safe to achieve in the United Kingdom, a girl who has come within centimetres of losing her life to fight for her right to an education is advised to tone down her ambition lest it make her seem unattractive or ‘uncool’ to her fellow students and is given advice on how best to regulate her appearance in order to succeed, in pretending to only be interested in boys and on how different choices of looks will lead to assumptions about her sexuality
An International Day of the Girl Child has even begun to be observed around the world on 11 October, with Ban Ki Moon marking that day in 2013 with a speech that stated: Empowering girls, ensuring their human rights and addressing the discrimination and violence they face are essential to progress for the whole human family
Summary
I am focusing on women’s rights and education because they are suffering the most. There was a time when women asked men to stand up for their rights, but this time we will do it for ourselves. (Malala Yousafzai’s speech to the United Nations, cited in Holpuch, 2013)Malala Yousafzai, the well-known campaigner for girls’ education from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, has blogged, given speeches and lobbied politicians since the age of 11 in response to the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and their acts of violence and intimidation against girls and their teachers in the region.
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