Paramjit Kaur Matharu

ASK most people who know Her Honour Judge Kalyani Kaul KC, and they will tell you that she is scrupulously fair minded but will not put up with “nonsense, racism, misogyny or bullying”. In 2023, she won her bullying and negligence case against the Ministry of Justice. Even though the MoJ did not admit liability, it had to pay £50,000 in compensation to the judge.

The former criminal barrister sued the MoJ, the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice because she said she was bullied and mistreated by senior members of the judiciary. Kaul’s case meant that the MoJ was forced to create a policy on “expected behaviour”, and it made sure that every judge in the country undergoes proper diversity training. Weeks after the settlement, Kaul lost her appeal against an employment tribunal that she had been indirectly discriminated against, victimised and harassed. One unnamed judge said, “The judge agreed with another white man who said that Kaly didn’t suffer racism because it was preposterous that racism exists in the judiciary. Can you believe that two white men would dare lecture a brown woman about her lived experiences? But that’s the judiciary for you, blinkered and in denial about everything in the real world.” Kaul’s claim was that senior judges failed to support her when others bullied her after she raised complaints about “disrespectful, dis courteous, unprofessional, and rude” barristers who appeared before her in 2015 at Snares brook crown court in east London.

SHE IS known as ‘Polar Preet’ and is one of the most high-profile women officers the British Army has produced to date. For this soldier of south Asian origin, the thirst to break records is unquenchable and Antarctica happens to be the hunting ground for her exploits. Preet already holds two world records for Antarctic trekking, and last December she laid her claim on the third – the fastest woman to complete a solo South Pole ski expedition. She claims she covered 1,130km of Antarctic ice in 31 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes. However, the Guinness World Records team is yet to verify it.

Captain Chandi set off from the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf on November 26 and arrived at the South Pole on December 28, by skiing for 12 to 13 hours a day on average and pulling a 75kg sled containing the essentials for her survival. Recalling her expedition in her blog, she said that in order to avoid pressure, she chose not to announce her latest expedition, and only a handful people knew. However, on the downside, supporting the trip became a problem. “I didn’t get enough funding to cover the expedition so once again used everything I had to get here. Raising funds is one of the toughest things when it comes to expeditions.”

A SENIOR NHS leader with three decades of experience in the medical profession, Professor Kiran Patel is the chief medical officer and deputy chief executive of the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust. Joining the Trust in July 2019 as medical director, he would soon find himself leading the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. On December 8, 2020, he made history when he prescribed the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial.

Dr Patel has been at the forefront of developing a new tool to address the NHS backlog, as the heath service remains under severe strain with millions of patients on waiting lists for hospital treatment, and emergency departments unable to see patients promptly. In 2022, the UHCW developed the Health Equity and Referral to Treatment (HEARTT), a tool that allocates priority for patients on the waiting list for planned care according to clinical as well as social factors, meaning the software can take health inequalities into account when prioritising patients for elective care. For Patel, who grew up in a ‘two-up two down terraced house’ in West Bromwich but graduated from Cambridge University’s King’s College, the issue of equity has always been close to his heart.

RENOWNED for her advocacy for girls’ education and their rights, Malala Yousafzai continues to be an influential figure globally. Speaking at the 21st Nelson Mandela Annual Peace Lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa in December 2023, Malala drew the world’s attention to what she calls “gender apartheid” en forced by the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, denying girls and women the right to education and work in the name of religion. “South Africans fought for racial apartheid to berecognised and criminalised at the international level…But gender apartheid has not been explicitly codified yet,” the youngest No bel Prize laureate said, calling on governments to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity.

She even suggested that the United Nations should add and adapt language on gender apartheid to the new Crimes Against Humanity Treaty that it is currently drafting. Malala was only 15 years old when she was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for daring to pursue an education in Swat Valley, Pakistan in October 2012. After recovering in the United Kingdom, she continued her fight for girls and founded the Malala Fund with her father, Ziauddin, in 2013. The charity is dedicated to “giving every girl an opportunity to achieve a future she chooses,” and its Education Champion Network sup ports the work of educators and advocates helping bolster girls’ secondary education around the world. At the age of 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which she shared with India’s Kailash Satyarthi in 2014.