GIRL POWER

MARIE SKLODOWSKA CURIE

Marie Skłodowska Curie (Warsaw, 1867) changed the world not once but twice. She founded the new science of radioactivity – even the word was invented by her – and her discoveries launched effective cures for cancer.
She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, first female professor at the University of Paris, and the first person – note the use of person there, not woman – to win a second Nobel Prize.

ROSA PARKS

In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American living in Montgomery, Alabama, challenged the race segregation that existed in parts of the US by refusing to give up her seat on a bus so that a white person could sit down. Her protest was supported by many other African Americans and sparked the civil rights movement which, in the 1960s, eventually won equal rights. Four years after her death in 2005, Barack Obama became the first African-American US president.

Emmeline Pankrust

In 1903, the social reformer Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian Britain, ‘Deeds, not words’ being its motto. She roused thousands of women to demand, rather than ask politely, for their democratic right in a mass movement never seen in British history.
She endured 13 imprisonments and her name and cause became known throughout the world.

In 1981, Diana Spencer became the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. Their wedding reached a global television audience of more than 700m people and she continued to attract much media attention, even after her divorce in 1996. She became well known internationally for her charity work for sick children, the banning of landmines and for raising awareness about those affected by cancer, HIV/AIDS and mental illness.

DIANA SPENCER
Princess of Wales

WANGARI MAATHAY was a Kenyan environmental activist. She founded the Green Belt Movement which campaigned for the planting of trees, environmental conversation and women’s rights. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Maathai was elected to parliament

and appointed assistant minister for Environment and Natural Resources from 2003– 2005.
In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, peace and democracy.

Amelia Earhart

Earhart took up aviation in 1921, aged 24. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
In June 1937 she began a flight around the world, becoming the first person to fly from the Red Sea to India. Unfortunately, she was reported missing on 2 July near Howland Island in the Pacific. Her disappearance is one of history’s unsolved mysteries and she was declared dead in 1939.