I have not written for a while due to a number of reasons. Basically, I got discouraged when Google canceled my Adsense account because there were too many clicks on the ads that produced no results, which is why I prefer the ads that pay commission when someone buys something. That makes more sense anyway and you have total control over what ads are show on your sight and where they actually go. I had not earned enough money to be paid anyway, so it was not a big deal. It was, however, discouraging.
That being said, there were other less compelling reasons that I have not written but I will not get into them at this time. Back to the subject which today is women and their roles in the workplace.
Let us start with GOD. HE made us women. HE took a part of the first man, Adam, and fashioned Eve. Men and women, it seems are incomplete without one another and for good reason. We were made that way. Anyone who has been single and then gotten married knows what it feels like to be "complete" in every sense of the word.
I started thinking about this subject due to an article I read written by a brilliant young woman. The article touched upon the reasons for women not either wanting to get into the sciences particularly the research end due to the heavy requirements of time that take away from family life.
I have to admit that I was a bit amused by the comments on the article. Evidently few have studied the life of Marie Sklodowska Curie born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. She was a two time Nobel Prize winner (the first woman to receive it) and discovered two elements, radium and polonium.
After she graduated from high school in Poland, because women were forbidden to attend the University of Warsaw, she went to a "floating university" where other women were taught and classes were at night to avoid detection. She then decided that the only way to get a formal education was to go where women were accepted. Marie worked as a governess to teach children and in her spare time taught children of Polish peasant workers, knowing if she were caught she risked punishment.
Poles were forbidden to teach laboratory science, but there were chemists and others who secretly disobeyed the law and Marie studied wherever she could.
She was 24 before she earned enough money to leave for Paris to study at the university. She left Poland promising to return after finishing her studies.
She completed her Masters Degrees in Physics and in Math in only three years. Because or in spite of being a mere woman, Marie Curie managed to make discoveries that lacking today's sophisticated equipment and monetary endowments were nothing short of amazing, even earth shattering.
Marie Curie was not noted for her abilities as a woman but those of a scientist. She was a wife and a mother and a scientist that worked long hours and was consumed with her work. In spite of their discoveries and their contribution to the scientific world, the Curies had problems covering their living expenses.
It was not until 1903 when Pierre and Marie Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics that their lives became easier and life seemed to be looking more positive. During the studies of uranium and other radioactive elements, both felt tired and ill much of the time. In retrospect, we can assume that their illnesses could have been the result of radiation poisoning. Pierre died in 1906 after falling in front of a horse drawn wagon. Only one day after his funeral, Marie went back to work. Within a month, the Sorbonne made her its first woman professor.
When the war broke out in 1914, Marie helped by equipping cars with x-ray equipment in order to help the doctors and medical staff on the front lines to reveal shrapnel and broken bones. She helped equip a fleet of 20 mobile and 200 stationary x-ray stations.
In 1934, Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia, which we now know is caused by over-exposure to radiation. Her daughter, Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie received the Nobel Prize for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.
Although she was a bit short-sighted and refused to believe that the radiation she studied so laboriously was at all harmful, it was her drive and determination that pushed her forward regardless of feeling ill, regardless of raising 2 daughters, regardless of having a husband.
She worked side by side with her husband. She contributed to the raising of her children and encouraged them to work with her. The one thing that I did not find in any biography of her was that she settled for anything. She did not whine about the law not letting her study. She did not whine about woman's rights. She did not whine about how everything was working against her. She just did it.
We now have polls, focus study groups, opinions, statistical analysis and talking heads of all sorts telling us what to feel, why we should feel a certain way and ignoring one vital thing. If you have a burning desire to accomplish something, go for it. To heck with funding. To heck with opinion polls and to heck with people's opinions. If someone does not give you funding, work and save for it. If you are meant to do it, the LORD will provide a way.
Women are only inhibited by their own desires. In the Bible there was Ruth and Esther and others. Throughout history there have been women who have changed the course of human events. Those women are still out there today. They are not rock stars or movie stars. Some are simply doing the most important job of all - raising children to become productive members of society and they are doing it sometimes alone, sometimes with the benefit of a husband. That last job is not to be taken lightly nor looked upon with disdain.
Choose your path carefully and give it everything you have to give but take care to include those around you.
Shalom. Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!
No comments:
Post a Comment