The year 2014 stood as a monument to intellectual genius, global activism, and economic stewardship, marking an era where women took explicit command of the world's most complex intellectual and financial engines. It was a twelve-month journey defined by a refusal to stay within prescribed margins.
From the highest peaks of mathematical innovation to the volatile front lines of global human rights, women stepped into positions of absolute authority, demonstrating that the structural solutions to the world's deepest problems lay squarely in their hands.
The global academic community witnessed the shattering of a legendary ceiling in August, when Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal, universally known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Her victory marked the first time a woman had ever received the prestigious award since its inception in 1936, celebrating her highly complex geometric breakthroughs in the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces.
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history, the second Pakistani and the only Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. Yousafzai is a human rights advocate for the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen." Continue reading
Meanwhile, the world's moral conscience was shaken and unified by seventeen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her relentless, dangerous advocacy for female education, transforming her personal survival into a global framework for girls' structural empowerment.
Simultaneously, the foundational gears of the global economy were placed under the historic stewardship of powerful women guiding international finance. In February, Janet Yellen was sworn in as the first female Chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board, stepping into command of the world's largest economy during a critical post-recession recovery.
Across the corporate landscape, Mary Barra made history by breaking the ultimate industrial ceiling, stepping into office as the chief executive officer of General Motors and becoming the first woman to lead a major global automaker through a rapid corporate and innovative restructuring.
This wave of pioneering leadership also swept the heights of global space exploration and legislative justice. In Italy, Samantha Cristoforetti blasted off to the International Space Station, capturing global headlines as Italy's first female astronaut and logging record-breaking consecutive days in orbit for a single mission.
At the state level, these individual triumphs were reflected in a growing public consciousness, as grassroots legal teams and female jurists increasingly led the charging litigation for marriage equality across federal courts, demonstrating a fierce commitment to human dignity and civil rights.
From chalkboard derivations of theoretical mathematics to the boardrooms of automotive giants, the narrative of the year made one fact undeniably clear. The accomplishments of these trailblazers transformed long-standing traditions of exclusion into fresh baseline requirements for global progress.
Overall in 2014, women broke a century-old barrier to win the Fields Medal in mathematics, claimed the youngest Nobel Peace Prize in history, and took command of the world’s most powerful financial and industrial institutions.
Marlene Leung of CTV News described 2014 as "the year women joined forces online and the Internet listened". The Twitter campaign #YesAllWomen, offering examples of sexism and harassment, attracted over one million tweets within four days in May. The hashtag was created after the Isla Vista killings in California, a killing spree in which the killer's misogyny was cited as a factor.
The street harassment of women was highlighted when actor Shoshana Roberts was hired by Hollaback! to walk through the streets of New York City. Their two-minute video, 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman, filmed over a period of ten hours, showed 108 instances described as harassment, including comments from men regarding Roberts' appearance. She received online threats after the video aired.
In June, the Egyptian government criminalized sexual harassment, though campaigners questioned whether the law would be enforced.
The street harassment of women was highlighted when actor Shoshana Roberts was hired by Hollaback! to walk through the streets of New York City. Their two-minute video, 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman, filmed over a period of ten hours, showed 108 instances described as harassment, including comments from men regarding Roberts' appearance. She received online threats after the video aired.
In June, the Egyptian government criminalized sexual harassment, though campaigners questioned whether the law would be enforced.
Responding to the heightened awareness of rape in India after the 2012 Delhi gang rape and the 2014 Badaun gang rape allegations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised parents, during his Independence Day speech in August, not only to ask where their daughters are going, but to check on their sons, because "a rapist is also somebody's son".
Another Indian politician, Mulayam Singh Yadav, opposing the introduction of the death penalty for rape, said in April "boys will be boys ... they commit mistakes", gaining considerable notoriety, while in June politician and former actor Tapas Paul said he would send his "boys" to rape women from an opposing party. Krishna Majumdar of the National Federation of Indian Women wrote in July that the Delhi and Badaun attacks were "nothing less than landmarks for women in India – landmarks in their consciousness of what men do, and can do, to them", and that "the machismo of the male, sexual assault or the fear of it, will not let women be truly free".
The comic book Priya's Shakti (December 2014) featured a female Indian rape survivor as its hero; Priya is banished when her family learns about the rape, but with the help of the Hindu goddess Parvati, she rides back on a tiger and is victorious.
First Lady Michelle Obama delivered the weekly presidential address in May to highlight the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in Nigeria, in which around 270 schoolgirls were kidnapped by an Islamist group. She argued that it was not an isolated incident: "It's a story we see every day as girls around the world risk their lives to pursue their ambitions."
Women's allegations of assault or harassment at the hands of prominent men – including Bill Cosby in the United States and Jian Ghomeshi in Canada - added to the debate about the abuse of women by men in power, and the difficulty of reporting it and being believed. Scotland Yard's Operation Yewtree in the UK, an investigation triggered by the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, led to convictions for the sexual assault of women or girls against Max Clifford, Rolf Harris and Dave Lee Travis, all well-known men in the media and entertainment industry
American football player Ray Rice was suspended by the NFL (later reversed) after video surfaced of him punching his female partner, and there were protests in the UK against soccer player Ched Evans being hired by another club after serving a jail sentence for rape.
Australia, the UK and Singapore barred US-based dating coach Julien Blanc, after complaints that his aggressive techniques amounted to abuse of women. Read More