biography of malala yousafzai wikipedia

Malala Yousafzai

At age eleven, Malala Yousafzai was already advocating for the rights of women and girls. As an outspoken proponent for girls’ right to education, Yousafzai was often in danger because of her beliefs. However, even after being shot by the Taliban, she continued her activism and founded the Malala Fund with her father. By age seventeen, Yousafzai became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 in Mingora, Pakistan. Mingora is the largest city in the Swat Valley of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan. Yousafzai was the first of three children born to Ziauddin and Tor Pekai Yousafzai. Although it was not always easy to raise a girl child in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai’s father insisted that she received all of the same opportunities afforded to boy children. Her father was a teacher and education advocate that ran a girls’ school in their village. Due to his influence, Yousafzai was passionate about knowledge from a very young age, and she would often waddle into her father’s classes before she could even talk. However, by the time she was ten years old, Taliban extremists began to take control of the Swat Valley and many of her favorite things were banned. Girls were no longer able to attend school, and owning a television, playing music and dancing were all prohibited. Girl’s education was specifically targeted by the Taliban and by the end of 2008 they had destroyed over 400 schools. At eleven years old, Yousafzai decided to stand up to the Taliban.

Yousafzai started by blogging anonymously for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in early 2009. She used the penname, “Gul Makai,” and spoke about her life under Taliban rule and how much she wanted to attend school. Her first BBC diary entry entitled, “I Am Afraid,” detailed her nightmares about a full-blown war in her hometown. Her nightmares started to become reality, as Yousafzai and her family were soon forced to leave their home due to rising tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban. This did not stop Yousafzai from advocating for her right to attend school. Over the next few years, she and her father began speaking out on behalf of girls’ education in the media. They campaigned for Pakistani girls’ access to a free quality education. By 2011, Yousafzai was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Although she did not win, that same year she earned Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Yousafzai was now a household name. However, this also made her a target.

On October 9, 2012, fifteen-year old Yousafzai was on the bus returning from school with her friends. Two members of the Taliban stopped the bus and asked, “Who is Malala?” When they identified Yousafzai, they shot her in the head. Fortunately, she was airlifted to a Pakistani military hospital and then taken to an intensive care unit in England. After ten days in a medically induced coma, Yousafzai woke up in a hospital in Birmingham, England. She had suffered no major brain damage, but the left side of her face was paralyzed, and she would require many reparative surgeries and rehabilitation. After months of medical treatment, Yousafzai was able to return to her family that now lived in England. In March 2013, Yousafzai began attending school in Birmingham. Although she was now able to attend school in England, she decided to keep fighting “until every girl could go to school.” [1] On her sixteenth birthday, Yousafzai spoke at the United Nations in New York. That same year she published her autobiography entitled, “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.” She was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament for her activism.

In 2014, Yousafzai and her father established the Malala Fund to internationally support and advocate for women and girls. Through her charity, she met with Syrian refugees in Jordan, young women students in Kenya, and spoke out in Nigeria against the terrorist group Boko Haram that abducted young girls to stop them from going to school. In December of 2014, Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. At age seventeen, she became the youngest person to be named a Nobel laureate. Since then, Yousafzai has continued to advocate for the rights of women and girls. The Malala Fund advocates for quality education for all girls by funding education projects internationally, partnering with global leaders and local advocates, and pioneering innovative strategies to empower young women. Yousafzai is currently studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford.

[1] Yousafzai , Malala. “Malala's Story: Malala Fund.” Malala Fund. Accessed March 14, 2020. https://malala.org/malalas-story.

• Brenner, Marie. “Malala Yousafzai: The 15-Year-Old Pakistani Girl Who Wanted More from Her Country.” Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair, January 29, 2015. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/04/malala-yousafzai-pakistan-profile.
• The Nobel Foundation. “Malala Yousafzai: Biographical.” NobelPrize.org. Accessed March 14, 2020. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/yousafzai/biographical/
• Yousafzai, Malala, and Christina Lamb.  I Am Malala: the Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban . London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013.
• Yousafzai , Malala. “Malala's Story: Malala Fund.” Malala Fund. Accessed March 14, 2020. https://malala.org/malalas-story.

Photo: Public domain.

MLA – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Malala Yousafzai.” National Women’s History Museum, 2020. Date accessed.

Chicago – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Malala Yousafzai.” National Women’s History Museum. 2020. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/malala-yousafzai.

• BBC News. “Profile: Malala Yousafzai.” BBC, August 17, 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23241937.
• Time Magazine. “Malala Yousafzai: 100 Women of the Year.” Time, March 5, 2020. https://time.com/5793780/malala-yousafzai-100-women-of-the-year/.

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Malala Yousafzai: Youngest Winner of Nobel Peace Prize

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Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim born in 1997, is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize , and an activist supporting the education of girls and women’s rights .

Earlier Childhood

Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan , born July 12, 1997, in a mountainous district known as Swat. Her father, Ziauddin, was a poet, educator, and social activist, who, with Malala’s mother, encouraged her education in a culture that often devalues the education of girls and women. When he recognized her keen mind, he encouraged her even more, talking politics with her from a very young age, and encouraging her to speak her mind.  She has two brothers, Khusal Khan and Apal Khan. She was raised as a Muslim and was part of the Pashtun community.

Advocating Education for Girls

Malala had learned English by the age of eleven and was already by that age a strong advocate of education for all. Before she was 12, she began a blog, using a pseudonym, Gul Makai, writing of her daily life for BBC Urdu. When the Taliban , an extremist and militant Islamic group, came to power in Swat, she focused her blog more on the changes in her life, including the Taliban’s ban on education for girls , which included the closing of, and often physical destruction or burning of, over 100 schools for girls. She wore everyday clothing and hid her schoolbooks so that she could continue to attend school, even with the danger. She continued to blog, making clear that by continuing her education, she was opposing the Taliban. She mentioned her fear, including that she might be killed for going to school.

The New York Times produced a documentary that year about the destruction of girls’ education by the Taliban, and she began more avidly supporting the right of education for all. She even appeared on television. Soon, her connection with her pseudonymous blog became known, and her father received death threats. He refused to close the schools he was connected with. They lived for a while in a refugee camp. During her time in a camp, she met women's rights advocate Shiza Shahid, an older Pakistani woman who became a mentor to her.

Malala Yousafzai remained outspoken on the topic of education. In 2011, Malala won the National Peace Prize for her advocacy.

Her continued attendance at school and especially her recognized activism enraged the Taliban. On October 9, 2012, gunmen stopped her school bus and boarded it. They asked for her by name, and some of the fearful students showed her to them. The gunmen began shooting, and three girls were hit with bullets. Malala was injured the most severely, shot in the head and neck. The local Taliban claimed credit for the shooting, blaming her actions for threatening their organization. They promised to continue to target her and her family if she should survive.

She nearly died of her wounds. At a local hospital, doctors removed a bullet in her neck. She was on a ventilator. She was transferred to another hospital, where surgeons treated the pressure on her brain by removing part of her skull. The doctors gave her a 70% chance of survival.

Press coverage of the shooting was negative, and Pakistan’s prime minister condemned the shooting. Pakistani and international press were inspired to write more extensively about the state of education for girls, and how it lagged behind that of boys in much of the world.

Her plight was known worldwide. Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize was renamed the National Malala Peace Prize. Only a month after the shooting, people organized the Malala and the 32 Million Girls Day, to promote girls’ education.

Move to Great Britain

To better treat her injuries, and to escape the death threats to her family, the United Kingdom invited Malala and her family to move there. Her father was able to obtain work in the Pakistani consulate in Great Britain, and Malala was treated in a hospital there.

She recovered very well. Another surgery put a plate into her head and gave her a cochlear implant to offset the hearing loss from the shooting.

By March of 2013, Malala was back in school, in Birmingham, England. Typically for her, she used her return to school as an opportunity to call for such education for all girls worldwide. She announced a fund to support that cause, the Malala Fund , taking advantage of her worldwide celebrity to fund the cause she was passionate about. The Fund was created with the assistance of Angelina Jolie. Shiza Shahid was a co-founder.

In 2013, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and for TIME magazine’s Person of the Year but won neither. She was awarded a French prize for women’s rights, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, and she made TIME’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.

In July, she spoke at the United Nations in New York City. She wore a shawl that had belonged to murdered Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto . The United Nations declared her birthday “Malala Day.”

I Am Malala, her autobiography, was published that fall, and the now 16-year-old used much of the funds for her foundation.

She spoke in 2014 of her heartbreak at the kidnapping, just a year after she was shot, of 200 girls in Nigeria by another extremist group, Boko Haram, from a girls’ school

Nobel Peace Prize

In October of 2014, Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with Kailash Satyarthi , a Hindu activist for education from India. The pairing of a Muslim and Hindu, a Pakistani and an Indian, was cited by the Nobel Committee as symbolic.

Arrests and Convictions

In September 2014, just a month before the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, Pakistan announced they had arrested, after a long investigation, ten men who had, under the direction of Maulana Fazullah, Taliban head in Pakistan, carried out the assassination attempt. In April 2015, the men were convicted and sentenced.

Continued Activism and Education

Malala has continued to be a presence on the global scene reminding of the importance of education for girls. The Malala Fund continues to work with local leaders to promote equal education, to support women and girls in getting an education, and in advocating for legislation to establish equal educational opportunities.

Several children’s books have been published about Malala, including in 2016 "For the Right to Learn: Malala Yousafzai’s Story."

In April 2017, she was designated a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the youngest so named.

She occasionally posts on Twitter, where she had by 2017 almost a million followers. There, in 2017, she described herself as “20 years old | advocate for girls’ education and women’s equality | UN Messenger of Peace | founder @MalalaFund.”

On September 25, 2017, Malala Yousafzai received the Wonk of the Year Award by American University and spoke there. Also in September, she was beginning her time as a college freshman, as a student at Oxford University. In typical modern fashion, she asked for advice on what to bring with a Twitter hashtag, #HelpMalalaPack.

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Biography Online

Malala Yousafzai Biography

Early Life Malala

Malala was born (12 July 1997) in Mingora, the Swat District of north-west Pakistan to a Sunni Muslim family. She was named Malala, which means ‘grief-stricken’ after a famous female Pashtun poet and warrior from Afghanistan.

Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai is a poet and runs a chain of public schools. He is a leading educational advocate himself. In 2009, Malala began writing an anonymous blog for the BBC expressing her views on education and life under the threat of the Taliban taking over her valley. It was her father who suggested his own daughter to the BBC. She wrote under the byline “Gul Makai.”

During this period, the Taliban’s military hold on the area intensified. At times, Malala reported hearing artillery from the advancing Taliban forces. As the Taliban took control of the area, they issued edicts banning television, banning music, and banning women from going shopping and limiting women’s education. Many girls schools were blown up and as a consequence pupils stayed at home, scared of possible reprisals from the Taliban. However, for a time, there was a brief respite when the Taliban stated girls could receive primary education if they wore Burkhas. But, a climate of fear prevailed, and Malala and her father began to receive death threats for their outspoken views. As a consequence, Malala and her father began to fear for their safety. Her father once considered moving Malala outside of Swat to a boarding school, but Malala didn’t want to leave.

” I don’t know why, but hearing I was being targeted did not worry me. It seemed to me that everybody knows they will die one day.” I am Malala p.188

When her father suggested they stop their campaigns for human rights, Malala replied

“How can we do that? You were the one who said that if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply ever if we are dead. We can’t disown our campaign!’ I am Malala p.188 People were asking me to speak at events. How could I refuse saying there was a security problem? We couldn’t do that, especially not as proud Pashtuns. My father always said that heroism is in the Pastun DNA. I am Malala p.180

After the BBC blog had ended, Malala featured in a documentary made by New York Times reporter Adam B.Ellick. She also received greater international coverage, and her identity about writing the BBC blog was revealed. In 2011, she received Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize, and she was nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Her increased profile and strident criticism of the Taliban caused Taliban leaders to meet, and in 2012, they voted to kill her.

On 9 October 2012, a masked gunman entered her school bus and asked “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up. Otherwise, I will shoot at you all.”

Malala was identified and she was shot with a single bullet which went through her head, neck and shoulder. Two other girls were also injured, though not as badly as Malala.

Malala survived the initial shooting but was in a critical condition. Her father was convinced she would die and told the village to prepare for her funeral. Her critical organs were failing, and she developed an infection. In a coma, she was moved to a hospital in Rawalpindi. Later on the 15 October, she was transferred to Birmingham in the United Kingdom for further treatment at a specialist hospital for treating military injuries. A couple of days later, she came out of a coma and responded well to treatment. She was discharged on January 3, 2013, and moved with her family to a temporary home in the West Midlands. Writing in her book “I am Malala” she writes.

“It was a miracle I was alive” (p.237)

She also writes about her lack of bitterness or desire for revenge.

“My only regret was that I hadn’t had a chance to speak to them before they shot me. Now they’d never hear what I had to say. I didn’t even think a single bad thought about the man who shot me – I had no thoughts of revenge – I just wanted to go back to Swat. I wanted to go home” I am Malala p.237

Response to Assassination attempt

Her assassination received worldwide condemnation and protests across Pakistan. Over two million people signed the Right to Education campaign. The petition helped the ratification of Pakistan’s first right to education bill in Pakistan.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Yousafzai was a symbol of the infidels and obscenity. However, other Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against the Taliban leaders and said there was no religious justification for shooting a schoolgirl.

United Nations petition

On 15 October, UN Special Envoy for global education, Gordon Brown , visited Malala whilst she was in hospital and launched a petition in her name – ‘In support for what Malala fought for.’

Using the slogan “I am Malala” the petition contains three demands

• We call on Pakistan to agree to a plan to deliver education for every child.
• We call on all countries to outlaw discrimination against girls.
• We call on international organisations to ensure the world’s 61 million out-of-school children are in education by the end of 2015.

I am Malala – petition

On 12 July 2013, she spoke at the United Nations to a group of 500 youths calling for worldwide access to education.

“I am not against anyone, neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I’m here to speak up for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all terrorists and extremists.” ( BBC Link of speech )

…I immediately saw images of Pakistanis fill my screen. Not the usual rock hurling Pakistanis, irrationally shouting amidst flaming tyres, but gentle candle-lighting, beautiful Pakistanis with words of love and peace on their lips. It was UN International day of the Girl Child and the BBC chose to illustrate this with a story of what they termed a National Awakening in Pakistan, following the shooting of 14-year-old school girl, Malala Yousafzai. I was delighted at the apparent 24 hour flip from a narrative of “those Pakistanis are so barbaric they shoot their own school girls” to one of hope, resilience, and a more accurate reflection of the millions who reject such an act. ( 5 February, 2013 )

Since 2013, she has studied at Edgbaston High School in Birmingham. She has continued to be a prominent activist based with her family living in Birmingham. In 2015, a documentary about Yousafzai was shortlisted for the Oscars ‘He Named Me Malala .’ In 2017, she began studying PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.

Further Quotes by Malala

“Today we all know education is our basic right. Not just in the West; Islam too has given us this right. Islam says every girl and everybody should go to school. In the Quran it is written, God wants us to have knowledge.” I am Malala p.263

“One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”

– UN Speech, July 12, 2013

“I love my God. I thank my Allah. I talk to him all day. He is the greatest. By giving me this height to reach people, he has also given me great responsibilities. Peace in every home, every street, every village, every country – this is my dream. Education for every boy and every girl in the world. To sit down on a chair and read my books with all my friends at school is my right. To see each and every human being with a smile of happiness is my wish. I am Malala p 265 “I am Malala, My world has changed by I have not.” p.265

In October 2014, the Nobel committee awarded Malala the Nobel Peace Prize, they said:

“Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. “This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”

In 2020, Malala met environmental activist Greta Thunberg at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford saying of Thunberg “The only friend I would miss school for.” Thunberg said of Malala “So… today I met my role model. What else can I say?”

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Malala”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net.  Last updated 5 March 2020. Originally published 18/10/2013.

I Am Malala

I Am Malala at Amazon

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Photo Credits

• photo top: United Nations information
• photo middle: Malala at the Oval Office, with President Obama
• Photo bottom: Global partnership for education

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Hillary Clinton and Malala Yousafzai producing. An election coming. ‘Suffs’ has timing on its side

After a successful run at the Public Theater, “Suffs” makes the move to Broadway. At a recent preview of the show, cast members Nikki M. James and Jenn Colella talked about Shaina Taub’s buzzy musical, and the show’s high-profile producers. (April 17)

Hillary Clinton says the opening of “Suffs” on Broadway “could not be better timed.” The former Secretary of State is a producer of the new musical about the women’s suffrage movement. (April 18)

This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Director Leigh Silverman talking with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a rehearsal for the off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. Clinton and Shaina Taub are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)

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This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Malala Yousafzai pointing to a sign for her off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)

This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Malala Yousafzai, right, and and Shaina Taub, creator and star of “Suffs” pose. Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Shaina Taub was in the audience at “Suffs,” her buzzy and timely new musical about women’s suffrage, when she spied something that delighted her.

It was intermission, and Taub, both creator and star, had been watching her understudy perform at a matinee preview last week. Suddenly, she saw audience members searching the Wikipedia pages of key figures portrayed in the show: women like Ida B. Wells, Inez Milholland and Alice Paul, who not only spearheaded the suffrage fight but also wrote the Equal Rights Amendment ( still not law, but that’s a whole other story).

“I was like, that’s my goal, exactly that!” Taub, who plays Paul, said from her dressing room later. “Do everything I can to make you fall in love with these women, root for them, care about them. So that was a really satisfying moment to witness.”

Satisfying but sobering, too. Fact is, few audience members know much about the American suffrage movement. So the all-female creative team behind “Suffs,” which had a high-profile off-Broadway run and opens Thursday on Broadway with extensive revisions, knows they’re starting from zero.

It’s an opportunity, says Taub, who studied social movements — but not suffrage — at New York University. But it’s also a huge challenge: How do you educate but also entertain?

One member of the “Suffs” team has an especially poignant connection to the material. That would be producer Hillary Clinton.

She was, of course, the first woman to win the U.S. presidential nomination of a major party, and the first to win the popular vote. But Clinton says she never studied the suffrage movement in school, even at Wellesley. Only later in life did she fill in the gap, including a visit as first lady to Seneca Falls, home to the first American women’s rights convention some 70 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.

This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Director Leigh Silverman talking with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a rehearsal for the off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. (Jenny Anderson via AP)

“I became very interested in women’s history through my own work, and writing and reading,” Clinton told The Associated Press. And so, seeing “Suffs” off-Broadway, “I was thrilled because it just helps to fill a big gap in our awareness of the long, many-decades struggle for suffrage.”

It was Taub who wrote Clinton, asking her to come on board. “I thought about it for a nanosecond,” Clinton says, “and decided absolutely, I wanted to help lift up this production.” A known theater lover, Clinton describes traveling often to New York as a college student and angling for discounts, often seeing only the second act, when she could get in for free. “For years, I’d only seen the second act of ‘Hair,’” she quips.

Clinton then reached out to Malala Yousafzai, whom Taub had also written about becoming a producer. As secretary of state, Clinton had gotten to know the Pakistani education activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman at age 15. Clinton wanted Yousafzai to know she was involved and hoped the Nobel Peace Prize winner would be, too.

“I’m thrilled,” Clinton says of Yousafzai’s involvement, “because yes, this is an American story, but the pushback against women’s rights going on at this moment in history is global.”

Yousafzai had also seen the show, directed by Leigh Silverman, and loved it. She, too, has been a longtime fan of musicals, though she notes her acting career both began and ended with a school skit in Pakistan, playing a not-very-nice male boss. Her own education about suffrage was limited to “one or two pages in a history book that talked about the suffrage movement in the U.K.,” where she’d moved for medical treatment.

“I still had no idea about the U.S. side of the story,” Yousafzai told the AP. It was a struggle among conflicting personalities, and a clash over priorities between older and younger activists but also between white suffragists and those of color — something the show addresses with the searing “Wait My Turn,” sung by Nikki M. James as Wells, the Black activist and journalist.

This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Malala Yousafzai pointing to a sign for her off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. (Jenny Anderson via AP)

“This musical has really helped me see activism from a different lens,” says Yousafzai. “I was able to take a deep breath and realize that yes, we’re all humans and it requires resilience and determination, conversation, open-mindedness … and along the way you need to show you’re listening to the right perspectives and including everyone in your activism.”

When asked for feedback by the “Suffs” team, Yousafzai says she replied that she loved the show just as it was. (She paid a visit to the cast last month, and toured backstage.) Clinton, who has attended rehearsals, quips: “I sent notes, because I was told that’s what producers do.”

Clinton adds: “I love the changes. It takes a lot of work to get the storytelling right — to decide what should be sung versus spoken, how to make sure it’s not just telling a piece of history, but is entertaining.”

Indeed, the off-Broadway version was criticized by some as feeling too much like a history lesson. The new version feels faster and lighter, with a greater emphasis on humor — even in a show that details hunger strikes and forced feedings.

One moment where the humor shines through: a new song titled “Great American Bitch” that begins with a suffragist noting a man had called her, well, a bitch. The song reclaims the word with joy and laughter. Taub says this moment — and another where an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson (played by Grace McLean, in a cast that’s all female or nonbinary) is burned — has been a hit with audiences.

“As much as the show has changed,” she says, “the spine of it is the same. A lot of what I got rid of was just like clearing brush.”

Most of the original cast has returned. Jenn Colella plays Carrie Chapman Catt, an old-guard suffragist who clashed with the younger Paul over tactics and timing. James returns as Wells, while Milholland, played by Phillipa Soo off-Broadway, is now played by Hannah Cruz.

Given its parallels to a certain Lin-Manuel Miranda blockbuster about the Founding Fathers, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the show has been dubbed “Hermilton” by some.

“I have to say,” Clinton says of Taub, “I think she’s doing for this part of American history what Lin did for our founders — making it alive, approachable, understandable. I’m hoping ‘Suffs’ has the same impact ‘Hamilton’ had.”

That may seem a tall order, but producers have been buoyed by audience reaction. “They’re laughing even more than we thought they would at the parts we think are funny, and cheering at other parts,” Clinton says. A particular cheer comes at the end, when Paul proposes the ERA. “A cast member said, ‘Who’d have ever thought the Equal Rights Amendment would get cheers in a Broadway theater?’” Clinton recalls.

One clear advantage the show surely has: timeliness. During the off-Broadway run, news emerged the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe vs. Wade, fueling a palpable sense of urgency in the audience. The Broadway run begins as abortion rights are again in the news — and a key issue in the presidential election only months away.

Taub takes the long view. She’s been working on the show for a decade, and says something’s always happening to make it timely.

“I think,” she muses, “it just shows the time is always right to learn about women’s history.”