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For International Women's Day we hear from India, Afghanistan and Morocco: three women who each flipped the script of their lives and triumphed.

Prema Dhanraj wanted to be a singer but as an eight-year-old she suffered terrible burns and almost died. Her mother, praying for Prema’s survival, bargained with God promising that if Prema lived she would become a doctor. Prema fulfilled her mother’s wishes and much more. She became a pioneering plastic surgeon, studying in the US, training other surgeons around the world and winning numerous awards. On returning to India she set up an organisation, Agni Raksha, in her home town Bengaluru, to offer free medical treatment and social care to burns survivors.

Afghan Sahra Mani found triumph in the most unexpected of ways, despite beginning life on the margins. Sahra grew up scrapping for an education and watching her young friends married off. Novels like Jane Eyre and her camera, a treasured gift from her mother, gave her a creative lifeline. She came to London to chase her dreams and study at university, eventually becoming an award-winning, internationally-recognised documentary filmmaker. Sahra went on to work as a university professor in Kabul. In August 2021 Sahra was abroad, visiting her dying mother. On the same night Sahra said her final goodbye, the Taliban captured her beloved city. Unable to return, Sahra channelled her sorrow by helping women stuck under their harsh new reality. She began collecting footage of Afghan women resisting Taliban rule. Things felt bleak and that’s when Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence reached out to ask if she could support her to make a film. Soon Malala Yousafzai joined them and an alliance was formed. Their film Bread and Roses can be watched on Apple TV and the clip played was courtesy of Apple TV.

Aziza Chaouni was the first Moroccan to study architecture at Harvard. She dreamed of creating the kind of dramatic glass and metal structures that were winning awards for architectural superstars. But her university professor and mentor sent her on a different mission – to create buildings and designs to help her home city of Fez. So Aziza decided on a project to restore the heavily-polluted and stinking river that runs through the ancient medina. It seemed a far cry from her original ambitions. But an epic journey across the Sahara Desert convinced her that the innovative engineering of water, sand and mud – rather than steel, glass and concrete – were her true calling.

Presenter: Saskia Collette
Producer: Sarah Kendal

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(Photo: Cassette tape. Credit: Getty Images)