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"PinterestFacebookMukhtar Mai is barely literate, yet Nicholas D. Kristof, the esteemed New York Times columnist, says of her, &amp;quot;There is no one person who has been more courageous&amp;#8212;or more effective&amp;#8212;in the struggle for women&amp;#39;s rights in the developing world.&amp;quot; Three years ago, four men from her village in Pakistan gang-raped Mukhtar, then 33, to punish her brother for an offense they believed he&amp;#39;d committed. Her honor destroyed, she was expected by her community and even her own family to kill herself in shame. Instead, she marshaled deep reserves of dignity and strength to show her village what honor really is. Over her own father&amp;#39;s initial objections, she went to the police, ultimately facing her attackers in a trial that put the four men in jail (an appeal that could free them is still pending). When the government rewarded her with $8,300 in compensation, she chose not to flee with her cash, but to remain in her hometown and use the money to start the village&amp;#39;s first-ever schools, even as her rapists&amp;#39; tribesmen continued to threaten her. &amp;quot;If women aren&amp;#39;t educated, it&amp;#39;s hard for them to speak up for themselves,&amp;quot; she has said. And only education, she believes, will stop future generations of men from abusing women (she has even enrolled her rapists&amp;#39; children). Since her story became public, Mukhtar has received tens of thousands of dollars from the international community for her schools; thousands of Pakistani women have traveled to her remote village to tell their own rape stories and receive help&amp;#8212;or simply to thank her for her bravery. With her stunning act of defiance and her ongoing activism, says Amna Buttar, M.D., of the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women, Mukhtar has &amp;quot;singlehandedly changed the attitudes toward rape and women&amp;#39;s rights in Pakistan, and given hope to survivors.&amp;quot; Mukhtar says, &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s because of the support of the world that I feel brave.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/story/mukhtar-mai>