Girls Can Do Anything Inspirational Women - Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova – Cosmonaut (Russia)
First woman in space
What do you want to be when you grow up? An astronaut of course! Yes, but
you
won’t ever become an astronaut. Or a professional footballer or a famous youtuber or a film star or a pop star. At least, that’s what hundreds of children will hear from adults they trust. They will be told that their dreams are not for them. They they are not good enough to achieve those dreams. That these are things
other people
do.
But if we tell them this, then we are crushing their ambition and robbing them of the drive that could actually propel them to become those things they dream of. Or, to becoming something else that they want to do more.
My philosophy has always been, “Well, someone’s got to do it, so why not me?” I understand that many teachers and parents mean well with these comments. They are trying to protect their youngsters from disappointment. I get it. But telling a child that their dreams are not for them denies them the opportunity to hope and to strive. Who are we to tell anyone what they can or can not achieve? If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that you can achieve anything if you are prepared to work hard, act on good advice and develop your skills. The dreams we have as children may not turn out to be the dreams we have as adults, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the desire to strive that is important. If we squash the desire to strive, we squash ambition and condem our children to failure before they’ve even got going.
Did you see that BBC series last summer,
Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes?
It featured a group of people that went through the same training that NASA astronauts and the person who won it was supposed to be invited to apply to be a real astronaut. Well, it was won by a woman called Suzie Imber, a professor of planetary science at Leicester University. What I really liked about the series was that each contestant excelled at something different. And that the people you thought might not stand a chance, turned out to be some of the strongest. The point is, you could not predict who would win. Just as you can not predict which children will achieve their dreams, whatever they may be.
A few years ago, I discovered Helen Sharman, who was the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991. Her achievements preceded Tim Peake’s by 24 years yet hardly anyone has heard of her. But we’ve all heard of Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and Tim Peake. All great achievers. And all male. Does that mean that there have been no women in space? Not at all! It’s just that we don’t really hear about them.
You might be surprised to discover that the first female cosmonaut went into space 55 years ago in 1963. That’s just two years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited the Earth in the spacecraft Vostok.
So why does it matter that a woman went into space 55 years ago? She wasn’t the first person to do so. In fact, she was the 12th. Why does it matter that Helen Sharman went into space 24 years before Tim Peake?
Well, it matters because it is proof to children that women
can
. Even though the number of female cosmonauts amounts to only 10% of the 561 people who have left this planet in a rocket, that’s still 60 women who have done it. And if other women have done it, it makes being an astronaut a possibility for every girl - and boy - who wants it enough.
Girls Can Do Anything
is about allowing our children to dream, and giving them the confidence that those dreams could come true. By showing them that these dreams belong as much to people born into female bodies as those born into male bodies, we are telling them that they are all valid and valuable human beings who have a positive contribution to make to the world. Let’s help our children achieve their dreams by letting them know that their dreams are achievable.
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