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Malala Yousafzai has told Emma Watson that the actor's speech to world leaders made her change her mind about not describing herself as a feminist.

The 18-year-old human rights and education champion from Pakistan met the film star at the premiere of a documentary about her, called He Named Me Malala.

Yousafzai, a Nobel peace prize winner, said she initially thought feminism was a "tricky word" but now believed everyone should be a feminist.

Watson, a UN global goodwill ambassador for women, gave a speech to the UN last year to launch her "He for She" campaign, aimed at encouraging men to speak up for women's rights.

Yousafzai began speaking out on education for girls in 2009 when she was just 12. She was 15 and on her way home from school in Swat valley, Pakistan, when she was shot in the head in October 2012, for speaking out against the Taliban and its ban on female education.

Yousafzai said her father, Ziauddin, had been an "example to all men" and called himself a feminist. She added: "It has been a tricky word. When I heard it the first time I heard some negative responses and some positive ones. I hesitated in saying am I feminist or not?

"Then after hearing your speech I decided there's no way and there's nothing wrong by calling yourself a feminist. So I'm a feminist and we all should be a feminist because feminism is another word for equality." Men "have to step forward" to promote equality of the sexes, she said.

Watson posted a video of the interview on her Facebook page and said she found Yousafzai's admission moving. She said: "Perhaps the most moving moment of today for me was when Malala addressed the issue of feminism. To give you some background, I had initially planned to ask Malala whether or not she was a feminist but then researched to see whether she had used this word to describe herself.

"Having seen that she hadn't, I decided to take the question out before the day of our interview. To my utter shock Malala put the question back into one of her own answers and identified herself. Maybe feminist isn't the easiest word to use ... but she did it anyway.

"I've spoken before on what a controversial word feminism is currently. More recently, I am learning what a factionalised movement it is too. We are all moving towards the same goal.

"Let's not make it scary to say you're a feminist. I want to make it a welcoming and inclusive movement. Let's join our hands and move together so we can make real change. Malala and I are pretty serious about it but we need you."

Yousafzai has been living in Birmingham with her family since the assassination attempt. She is studying for A-levels in history, economics, maths and religious studies and plans could include going to Oxford University, or Stanford, in California.

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Malala Yousafzai tells Emma Watson: I'm a feminist thanks to you

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Malala Yousafzai has told Emma Watson that the actor's speech to world leaders made her change her mind about not describing herself as a feminist. The 18-year-old human rights and education champion from Pakistan met the film star at the premiere of a documentary about her, called He Named Me Malala.

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Some girls don't have the right to an education

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Some girls don't have the right to an education

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Power of Women: Reese Witherspoon on Malala Fund, Inspiring Female Leaders

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Celebrity bringing awareness to feminist issues

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Celebrity bringing awareness to feminist issues

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Emma Watson Explains Why Some Men Have Trouble With Feminism | Entertainment Weekly

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More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant - kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die - some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault, wearing not much more than what their foremothers once dubbed "objects of female oppression" in marches called SlutWalks.

It's a controversial name, which is in part why the organizers picked it. It's also why many of the SlutWalk protesters are wearing so little (though some are sweatpants-clad, too). Thousands of women - and men - are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape. SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto and have gone viral, with events planned in more than 75 cities in countries from the United States and Canada to Sweden and South Africa. In just a few months, SlutWalks have become the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.

In a feminist movement that is often fighting simply to hold ground, SlutWalks stand out as a reminder of feminism's more grass-roots past and point to what the future could look like.

The marches are mostly organized by younger women who don't apologize for their in-your-face tactics, making the events much more effective in garnering media attention and participant interest than the actions of well-established (and better funded) feminist organizations. And while not every feminist may agree with the messaging of SlutWalks, the protests have translated online enthusiasm into in-person action in a way that hasn't been done before in feminism on this scale.

The protests began after a police officer told students at Toronto's York University in January that if women want to avoid rape, they shouldn't dress like "sluts." (If you thought the days of "she was asking for it" were long gone, guess again.)

Heather Jarvis, a student in Toronto and a co-founder of SlutWalk, explained that the officer's comments struck her and her co-organizers as so preposterous and damaging that they demanded action. "We were fed up and pissed off, and we wanted to do something other than just be angry," she said. Bucking the oft-repeated notion that young women are apathetic to feminism, they organized. What Jarvis hoped would be a march of at least 100 turned out to be a rally of more than 3,000 - some marchers with "slut" scrawled across their bodies, others with signs reading "My dress is not a yes" or "Slut pride."

The idea that women's clothing has some bearing on whether they will be raped is a dangerous myth feminists have tried to debunk for decades. Despite all the activism and research, however, the cultural misconception prevails. After an 11-year-old girl in Texas was gang-raped, the New York Times ran a widely criticized story this spring that included a description of how the girl dressed "older than her age" and wore makeup - as if either was relevant to the culpability of the 18 men accused of raping her. In Scotland, one secondary school is calling for uniforms to be baggier and longer in an attempt to dissuade pedophiles.

When I speak on college campuses, students will often say they don't believe that a woman's attire makes it justifiable for someone to rape her, but - and there almost always is a "but" - shouldn't women know better than to dress in a suggestive way?

What I try to explain to those students is part of what the SlutWalk protests are aiming to relay on a grander scale. That yes, some women dress in short, tight, "suggestive" clothing - maybe because it's hot outside, maybe because it's the style du jour or maybe just because they think they look sexy. And there's nothing wrong with that. Women deserve to be safe from violent assault, no matter what they wear. And the sad fact is, a miniskirt is no more likely to provoke a rapist than a potato sack is to deter one.

As one Toronto SlutWalk sign put it: "Don't tell us how to dress. Tell men not to rape." It's this - the proactive, fed-upness of SlutWalks - that makes me so hopeful for the future.

Feminism is frequently on the defensive. When women's activists fought the defunding of Planned Parenthood, for example, they didn't rally around the idea that abortion is legal and should be funded. Instead, advocates assured the public that Planned Parenthood clinics provide breast exams and cancer screenings. Those are crucial services, of course, but the message was far from the "free abortion on demand" rallying cry of the abortion rights movement's early days.

Established organizations have good reason to do their work in a way that's palatable to the mainstream. They need support on Capitol Hill and funding from foundations and donors. But a muted message will only get us so far.

"We called ourselves something controversial," Jarvis says. "Did we do it to get attention? Damn right we did!"

Nineteen year-old Miranda Mammen, who participated in SlutWalk at Stanford University, says the idea of "sluttiness" resonates with younger women in part because they are more likely than their older counterparts to be called sluts. "It's also loud, angry, sexy in a way that going to a community activist meeting often isn't," she says.

Emily May, the 30-year-old executive director of Hollaback, an organization that battles street harassment, plans to participate in SlutWalk in New York City in August. "Nonprofit mainstays like conferences, funding and strategic planning are essential to maintaining change - but they don't ignite change," she says. "It's easy to forget that change starts with anger, and that history has always been made by badasses."

Unlike protests put on by mainstream national women's organizations, which are carefully planned and fundraised for - even the signs are bulk-printed ahead of time - SlutWalks have cropped up organically, in city after city, fueled by the raw emotional and political energy of young women. And that's the real reason SlutWalks have struck me as the future of feminism. Not because an entire generation of women will organize under the word "slut" or because these marches will completely eradicate the damaging tendency of law enforcement and the media to blame sexual assault victims (though I think they'll certainly put a dent in it). But the success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing. One when women's anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.

Established feminist groups have had tremendous success organizing feminist action in recent years. The 2004 March for Women's Lives - put on by the National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority Foundation and others - brought out more than 1 million people protesting President George W. Bush's anti-woman, anti-choice policies. It was an incredible event, but the momentum of the protest largely stopped when the march did.

It's too early to tell whether SlutWalks will draw people on that scale, but they are different in a key respect. Instead of young women being organized by established groups, SlutWalks have young women organizing themselves - something I believe makes these women more likely to stay involved once the protest is over.

SlutWalks aren't a perfect form of activism. Some feminist critics think that by attempting to reclaim the word "slut," the organizers are turning a blind eye to the many women who don't want to salvage what they see as an irredeemable term. As Harsha Walia wrote at the Canadian site Rabble: "I personally don't feel the whole 'reclaim slut' thing. I find that the term disproportionately impacts women of color and poor women to reinforce their status as inherently dirty and second-class."

Anti-pornography activist Gail Dines argued, along with victims rights advocate Wendy Murphy, that the SlutWalk organizers are playing into patriarchal hands. They say the protesters "celebrating" the word "slut" and dressing in risque clothing are embracing a pornified consumer sexuality. Frankly, I don't think any of these women will be posing for the "Girls Gone Wild" cameras anytime soon. Yes, some protesters have worn lingerie, but others have worn jeans and T-shirts. Organizers encourage marchers to wear whatever they want because the point is that no matter what women wear, they have a right not to be raped. And if someone were to attack them, they have a right not to be blamed for it.

In the past, clothing designed to generate controversy has served to emphasize the message that women have a right to feel safe and participate fully in society. Suffragists wore pants called "bloomers," named for the women's rights activist Amelia Bloomer. They were meant to be more practical than the confining dresses of the times. But, echoing the criticism of SlutWalk participants today, the media did not take kindly to women wearing pants. The November 1851 issue of International Monthly called the outfits "ridiculous and indecent," deriding the suffragists as "vulgar women whose inordinate love of notoriety is apt to display itself in ways that induce their exclusion from respectable society."

The SlutWalkers, in outfits that could be grumpily labeled "ridiculous and indecent," are not inducing exclusion from respectable society. They're generating excitement, translating their anger into action and trying to change our supposedly respectable society into one that truly respects men, women and yes, even "sluts."

Jessica Valenti, the founder of Feministing.com, is the author of "The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women" and the forthcoming "Why Have Kids?: The Truth About Parenting and Happiness."

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More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant - kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die - some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault, wearing not much more than what their foremothers once dubbed "objects of female oppression" in marches called SlutWalks.

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The march took off from College Green. Credit: Sophia Dai

More than 100 Penn and Drexel students marched to protest sexual assault and relationship violence on Penn's campus Thursday night as part of Take Back the Night, an annual event hosted by the Penn chapter of Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention.

The event consisted of a rally on College Green, a march around campus, a survivor speak-out at Houston Hall, and a debrief at the Penn Women's Center at the end of the night. It is one of hundreds of protests that take place around the world each year through the Take Back the Night Foundation, which works to eliminate violence against women.

The rally began with a performance by the Drexel African Fusion Dance Team, followed by opening remarks from ASAP Chair and College senior Kara Hardie and speeches from leaders of campus organizations such as Penn Women's Center, Counseling and Psychological Services, and Penn Violence Prevention.

Penn Women's Center Director Sherisse Laud-Hammond spoke about the resources available to survivors on campus, adding that these resources exist to "create and maintain safe spaces" for students. Laud-Hammond said she hoped students left the event feeling encouraged to raise their voices against sexual assault.

Sonalee Rashatwar, a sex therapist and grassroots organizer, gave a keynote speech at the event and said movements such as Take Back the Night too often focus on "thin, cisgender, heterosexual white women." She urged students to consider the needs of indigenous women, incarcerated women, men who are survivors, and other groups that are less represented in discussions of sexual violence to "take back the night for all of us."

After the rally, students marched around campus holding signs and chanting phrases such as "UPenn unite! Take back the night!" and "No more silence! No more violence!"

"Sexual harassment and sexual assault is a conversation that has come up a lot among my classmates and my peers," College freshman Zareen Khan said. "It was really nice to hear that this event is doing something in a positive way to combat it."

The march was followed by a survivor speak-out in Houston Hall. Hardie said she hoped the event would "provide a space where survivors feel heard, believed, and supported."

The event came amid student criticism of Penn President Amy Gutmann for declining to attend Take Back the Night for the past four years. This year, Gutmann did not attend due to a scheduling conflict, and instead sent a written statement of support. Hardie said Gutmann's statements have been read aloud in the past, but this year the statement was printed on the first page of the program instead.

"We respect [Gutmann's] support and we're glad that she stands by this event," Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault President and College junior Justin Iannacone said. "Hopefully, in the future, we'd like to see her come out to one Take Back the Night event."

"I think it's quite problematic," Khan said of Gutmann's absence. "But I think it's more of a reason to have more students come here and pressure for some sort of change."

Khan added that she hopes Take Back the Night allows students to empower themselves to create change without relying on top-down changes from administrators.

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Students rally at 'Take Back the Night' to protest sexual violence on campus

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More than 100 Penn and Drexel students marched to protest sexual assault and relationship violence on Penn's campus Thursday night as part of Take Back the Night, an annual event hosted by the Penn chapter of Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention.