Why Michelle Yeoh believes in the power of women
On-screen, the Oscar winner has confronted outdated gender and racial stereotypes. Off-screen, she’s honoring the resilience and ingenuity that women show in the face of disaster.
Ten years ago, Michelle Yeoh was visiting Kathmandu with her now husband, Jean Todt, when the city was struck by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The couple had been attending an event at a low-rise hotel and narrowly escaped the devastation. The experience was harrowing. “When the earth shook, I was immediately on the floor,” Yeoh recalls. “We literally had to crawl out because there was no way to stand.”
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Yeoh was stunned by the destruction. Close to 9,000 people were dead and millions more displaced. What impacted her most was how helpless she felt. “If you are not a first responder, don’t try to help—you just get in the way,” she recalls. But after she and Todt left the country, she found herself thinking about the Nepali survivors, many of whom had nowhere to go. And so weeks later, amid aftershocks and landslides, Yeoh returned to Nepal, working with Live to Love International, a New York–based NGO that partners with a local nunnery to aid villages.
She came back again the following year to join the United Nations Development Programme’s continuing relief efforts. Renaud Meyer, then head of UNDP in Nepal, immediately grasped the value of Yeoh’s fame for mobilizing partners. But he hadn’t anticipated the depth of her ability to connect with local women. He recalls arriving at a cluster of dilapidated houses where some women were so happy to see aid workers that they started singing and dancing. “Michelle didn't even wait to be asked,” Meyer recalls. “She immediately started dancing with them. It was such a nice, warm moment, where suddenly life comes back to this community.”
Yeoh visited UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley and remote villages on the outskirts of the capital. Meyer remembers the searing time they spent together in Sindhupalchowk, one of the worst-hit districts. “What people see from outside is the damage. You see the houses in rubble. You see everything destroyed,” he says. “But for the people who live there, it's really the emotional aspect of the earthquake: ‘I’ve lost everything. My life is in shambles.’ It was overwhelming. These people were homeless, but most importantly they were hopeless.” For Yeoh, it felt vital to reach people in both the cities and remote villages with messages of hope: “We know you are there. We have not forgotten about you.”
Raised in Malaysia, Yeoh, 62, began her career in 1980s Hong Kong. On-screen, she’s subverted the role of the Bond Girl in Tomorrow Never Dies, helped put Asian films in the mainstream with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and earned an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, a moment she used to call out sexist ageism during her acceptance speech. Off-screen, she has been involved in a wide range of charitable causes—from cancer and AIDS research to wildlife conservation and climate change.
Yeoh was already a fierce advocate for gender equality when she visited Nepal, and the resilience and ingenuity Nepalese women showed in the face of disaster only deepened her conviction. As she ventured into the countryside, where many wells had been destroyed, she saw dozens of women trekking for miles with pots of water balanced on their heads. The image struck her as a metaphor for the burden of rebuilding their communities—work that often goes unacknowledged and unsupported.
Yeoh now brings that perspective to other disaster zones, and recently focused attention on Turkey and Syria, both devastated by a series of earthquakes in 2023. The strongest registered at 7.8, the same severity as the Nepal tragedy. She believes that it’s especially important to empower women within these hard-hit areas because they are often the first to come forward to help others in crisis, even though they tend to suffer disproportionate violence and abuse. Yeoh’s experience in Nepal cemented her belief that women are the driving force behind the renewal of their communities. While visiting the region, she saw how women often bore the brunt of the hard work. At the same time, they also focused on sustainable solutions.
“These women rally together to resolve the situation,” she says. “I could see the resilience. And they are very forward thinking.” In the rural Sindhupalchowk district, for example, she helped them inaugurate a milk collection center. This kind of humanitarian work has convinced her of the possibilities of incremental change. “For me, as long as you have hope, you will keep going forward. That’s the most powerful thing.”
