My little scientist explains the life of Marie Curie.
Note what she emphasises and chooses to focus on, and what she leaves out.
As she grows, and reads, and talks, I realise how things look from her perspective, especially the role of males, which she describes quite matter-of-factly in her ‘one day, her husband decided to join her and do science’ as if Pierre Curie’s addition to the pantheon of science legends was an afterthought, an adjunct to Marie’s own arc.
It also brings in sharp relief the telling or human history from the perspective of men, something we have normalised, and that can only be seen by a non-man, and never by men themselves.
Here’s to the rebel girls! May their tribe grow. May our perspectives be continually challenged until one day, it is normal to hear a story with a woman of science as the protagonist, and the male as merely a bystander. May that day happen in our lifetimes. And may we, men, look at the women with honest heartfelt pride as equal partners in shouldering humanity’s evolution towards betterment.
