Women who changed the world
Text I
Born in Warsaw, Marie Curie became the first woman Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne (Paris) in 1906. She had Masters Degrees in both physics and mathematical sciences and was the first woman to obtain a Doctor of Science degree. Madame Curie was also the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. The first was in Physics in 1903, with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, for their study in spontaneous radiation. The second was in Chemistry in 1911 for her work in radioactivity.
Text II
An indigenous Guatemalan woman of the K’iche’ branch of the Mayan culture, Rigoberta Menchú has dedicated her life to promoting the rights of indigenous peoples. She became active in the women’s rights movement as a teenager and later was a prominent workers’ rights advocate. In 1992 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation for indigenous peoples in Guatemala and is the first indigenous person to receive the prize.
Text III
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani advocate for girls education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. In 2009, when Malala was just eleven she began blogging about life under the Taliban, speaking out directly against their threats to close girls’ schools. The blog on BBC Urdu garnered international attention while also making her the target of death threats. In October 2012, a gunman shot her and two other girls as they were coming home from school. Malala survived the attack, and, in October 2014, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyart.
Felicity Amos. 12 women who changed the world. Internet: www.one.org (adapted)
Judge the following items according to texts I, II and III.
In texts II and III, the word “advocate” indicates that both Rigoberta and Malala were lawyers.
