BBC's 100 Inspiring Women Of 2024: These Indians, Indian-Americans Feature In List

The BBC’s list of 100 most inspiring and influential women worldwide for 2024 includes three Indians for their remarkable achievements. Olympian-turned-politician Vinesh Phogat, social activist Aruna Roy and funerary rites advocate Pooja Sharma are the Indians who have made it to the prestigious list of 100 most inspiring women worldwide.

The list also recognised the contributions of two Indian-American women— astronaut Sunita Williams and 20-year-old AI expert Sneha Revanur.

Each year, the media organisation compiles a list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world, as it has done for 2024.

According to the BBC, this year’s theme was ‘resilience’. “BBC 100 Women acknowledges the toll this year has taken on women around the world by celebrating those who—through their resilience—are forging new lives and changing futures, as the world changes around them."

“From facing deadly conflicts and humanitarian crises in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan, to witnessing the polarisation in societies that followed a record number of elections around the world, women have had to dig deep and find new levels of resilience,” added the media outlet, releasing the list of the 100 most inspiring women for 2024.

The list is divided into five categories—Climate Pioneers, Culture and Education, Entertainment and Sport, Politics and Advocacy, and Science, Health and Tech.

Here is everything you need to know about the inspiring Indian and Indian-American women who got featured in the BBC 100 Women 2024 list.

The well-known social activist ditched her civil service career in order to engage more with the rural communities. She co-founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a grassroots organisation that focuses on transparency and fair wages. As the co-founder of the orgaisation, she was instrumental in the enactment of a landmark 2005 law enabling citizens to demand government accountability. The President of the National Federation of Indian Women, Roy has won multiple prizes including Ramon Magsaysay, often called the "Nobel Prize of Asia".

Pooja Sharma has been performing the last rites of unclaimed bodies in Delhi for the past three years, despite fighting backlash and resistance from priests over social norms. Till now, she has performed the funeral rites of over 4,000 individuals from different faiths and religions, giving everyone the dignity they deserve after death. Her motivation came after performing the last rites of her brother, who was killed but no one showed up to help with his funeral.

Three-time Olympian-turned-politician Vinesh Phogat, who became the first Indian woman to reach Olympic wrestling finals in 2024, also features on the list. An open critic of sexism that women face in sports, Phogat was disqualified from the final round of Olympics after she was found overweight. She was the face of a months-long protest seeking justice against alleged sexual harassment of junior wrestlers. She is a winner of several medals in events like World Championships, Commonwealth and Asian Games.

Sunita Williams, a retired Navy helicopter pilot and former record holder for the most spacewalks by a woman, became the first person to run a marathon in space in 2007. She is the second American astronaut of Indian heritage to go into space, after Kalpana Chawla. During her last space mission, where she took off on June 5 on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station, she was informed that she won’t be able to return to earth before February 2025, following technical glitches. 

At just 20 years of age, Indian-American AI expert Sneha Revanur is the founder of Encode Justice, which is a global youth movement for safe, equitable artificial intelligence. The movement has amassed more than 1,300 members across 30 countries. The Stanford University student’s organisation aims to mitigate the threats posed by emerging technology and include young people in critical conversations. A summer fellow at the Center for AI and Digital Policy, she recently became the youngest person on TIME magazine’s inaugural list of the 100 most influential voices in AI.

Apart from these powerful women, the BBC 100 Women 2024 list also includes the names of activists and women rights advocates from several countries. The coveted list includes the names like Hollywood actress Sharon Stone, Olympic athletes Rebeca Andrade and Allyson Felix, singer Raye, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, visual artist Tracey Emin, climate campaigner Adenike Oladosu, Iranian journalist Zhina Modares Gorji and writer Cristina Rivera Garza, among others.