I was deeply touched by Emma Watson's recent speech on feminism to the UN as Goodwill Ambassador. This was not only because I am a woman, nor was it only due to the fact that I have lived most of my adult life in a developing country where gender inequality is overwhelmingly present in our daily lives. Mainly, it moved me because it reminded me of the day I realized I was a feminist.

I was one of the interpreters working in a Gender and Diversity workshop in Bangkok, and the facilitators of the workshop asked us to integrate the workshop and participate as well as interpret. One of the main facilitators was the amazing Kamla Bhasin, and she was going to change the way I looked at things and at myself, as a woman.

Today I read terrible newson the Internet. In spite all the work done for decades by UN agencies to raise awareness on the terrible and inhumane practice of Female Genital Mutilation, also known as FGM, still more than 200 million girls and women have undergone this terrible procedure.

Yet, for the past few years, we have seen the headlines in the international press that country after country made it illegal to perform FGM, and naively, we celebrated the news. It has become apparent that the data was wrong by a huge margin, and we now read that 70 million more girls and women than previously estimated have been subjected to this practice.