scientists, and so on, have been men, and that women have made, numerically, by comparison, a very poor showing? Clearly the superiority is with men. Where are the Leonardos, the Van Goghs, the Michelangelos, the Shakespeares, the Donnes, the Galileos, the Newtons, the Einsteins, the Freuds, the Mozarts, the Bachs, the Kants, and the Humes of the feminine world? In fields in which women have excelled, in poetry and the novel, how many female poets and novelists of truly first rank have there been? Haven't well-bred young women for centuries been educated in music? And how many among them have been great composers or instrumentalists? Possibly there is a clue here in answer to the question asked. May it not be that women are just about to emerge from the period of subjection during which they were the menials of the masculine world, a world, in which the opportunities and encouragements were simply not available to women? Or in a profounder sense may we not say with Oscar Wilde that "owing to their imperfect education, the only works we have had from women are works of genius."
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Today almost everywhere, in spite of remaining discriminations, women are achieving what was once considered beyond their capacity: The Nobel Prize in literature has gone to Selma Lagerlof (1909), Grazia Deledda (1926), Sigrid Undset (1928), Pearl S. Buck (1938), Gabriela Mistral (1945), Nelly Sachs (1966), Nadine Gordimer (1991), Toni Morrison (1993), and Wislawa Symborska (1996). The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Bertha von Suttner (1905), Jane Addams (1931), Emily G. Balch (1946), Mairead Corrigan (1976), Betty Williams (1976), Mother Teresa (1979), Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), Rigoberta Menchu Tum (1992) and Jody Williams (1997).
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Not long ago it was inconceivable that any woman would ever have brains enough to attain great distinction in science. Marie Curie, the first scientist to receive a Nobel Peace prize twicein 1903, when she shared the prize in physics, and 1911, for her work in chemistrywas regarded as a sort of rare mutation. But Mme Curie no longer remains the only woman scientist to receive a Nobel Prize: In chemistry, her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie shared the prize in 1935; Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin received it in 1964. Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the physics prize in 1963. In physiology or medicine, Gerty R. Cori shared the prize in 1947, Rosalyn S. Yalow in 1977, Barbara McClintock
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