India's Pink Vigilantes

(Above: The Gulabi Gang)

If you're reading this and you're female, consider yourself very, very lucky. There are many parts of the world where girls and women lead much harder lives than most of us could ever imagine. Like the part of India known as Banda. There, women are rarely educated or allowed to work. Their marriages are often arranged when they're still children (sometimes as young as nine), and bridegrooms can demand large dowries before they'll accept the girls into their families. If a dowry isn't considered large enough, a girl can be severely mistreated, even killed.

But two years ago, a remarkable woman named Sampat Pal Devi formed an organization that seeks to protect Banda's women from violence and corruption. Known as the Gulabi Gang (Pink Gang), the group of female vigilantes gathers together whenever a little butt-kicking is in order. Wearing distinctive pink saris, the Gulabi Gang investigates and protests government corruption. They punish men who've abused their wives and teach other women self-defense skills.

While the Gulabi Gang is starting to make real progress, there's still a long way to go before women in Banda are treated with dignity. But Sampat Pal Devi is already one of my personal heroes.

Read more here.