Fears over the safety of women voting in next week's elections in Pakistan are rising after letters have been circulated in regions of the country warning men not to allow their wives, sisters and daughters out to the polling stations.

In an increasingly fraught and violent runup to the 11 May vote, leaflets are appearing stating that it is "un-Islamic" for women to participate in democracy.

Now a group of young female activists are planning to challenge what they call the government's inability to protect women's right to vote by organising their own protection teams at individual polling stations in tense and volatile Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan, formerly known as the North West Frontier Province.

In what is being called Pakistan's youth election – almost a third of the electorate is between 18 and 29 – a growing tide of young women are determined to overcome cultural and political obstacles to make their voices heard.

Saba Ismail, 23-year-old founder and director of Aware Girls, a peace group for and led by young women to train girls in leadership skills, said they already planned to monitor 30 polling stations with volunteers who would support women who came out to vote and hoped to reach many more.

Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old activist for girl's educational rights who became an international figure after being shot and badly injured in a Taliban assassination attempt last October, was one of those trained by Ismail's group.

"Malala is not the only one who has been so brave, but she is a hero to all of us now," Ismail said. "Such a strong young woman and a true role model, I was very impressed by her. Many women and girls will feel empowered by Malala to come out and vote. It has been made very clear that women in Pakistan should not vote and those in rural areas are the most vulnerable, so we will be putting volunteers out to try and help women feel they can come out on this important day.

"For the 2008 elections, many polling stations were torched and women were told it was vulgar for them to cast a vote. This time we want Pakistan to have a free and fair election and for women to be able to vote in secret, not be told who to vote for by her family.

"Even those few women who are inside the political system are ordered about by their family. They are wives or daughters of men who want them to do their bidding, they are there just to make up quota numbers and have to do what they are told. It would be better to have quality not quantity.

"Recently on Pakistan TV we had three female politicians in the studio for a debate. They were asked questions like 'Should women really be allowed to work because they take more time to come to the office because they put make-up on?'"

Ismail said she was disappointed at the resurgence of the extremists' campaign to stop women voting. Her group has had to move offices twice because of threats made against it.

The army has announced that 70,000 troops will be deployed in the four provinces on election day, along with thousands of police and other security forces. In some areas there are fears that booths may not open amid reports that election workers in Balochistan are refusing to man them because of security fears. Despite that, polls indicate there could be a record turnout, higher than the 44% in the 2008 elections. The elections mark the end of the first full term in office of a democratically elected government in Pakistan's history. Others have been interrupted by coups and blighted by dictatorships.

"War means men get angry and their aggressive behaviour is taken out on the family," Ismail said. "For women they are used not as a way forward for peace but as a strategy, a means to produce more soldiers for more war. In Pakistan women have internalised all into their minds that they are lesser beings. But I believe change will come."

But the next few days seem doomed to get bloodier, with 11 May a showdown between the Taliban and other groups and the strength of Pakistan's pull towards democracy. Last week three political parties which had been publicly threatened by Taliban forces issued a joint statement saying they would not be cowed by violence.

On Friday a candidate of the Awami National party was killed with his three-year-old son by gunmen in Karachi. On the same day in the capital Islamabad, Pakistan's main government prosecutor on the Benazir Bhutto murder case was shot dead. Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali was killed as he was driving to the next hearing in the murder case of the former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007.