Marta Vieira da Silva was born and grew up in Alagoas. Her father left when she was a year old, and her mother went out to work full-time as a cleaner.
Home alone with her two brothers and sister, Marta discovered soccer. She played out on the street without shoes and kicked a ball made of scrunched-up plastic bags. When Marta was 5, her mother refused to buy her a ball, saying “You’re a girl, Marta.” But Marta did not accept that soccer was just for boys. By the age of seven, she was training with the boys every day.
Marta couldn’t attend school regularly because of her family’s money problems. From the age of 11, she worked as a street vendor selling fruit and clothes and also played for her local soccer club.
“There may be tough times, but the difficulties which you face will make you more determined to achieve your objectives and to win against all the odds.”
When Marta was 14 years old, she was talent-spotted by soccer scout and coach Helena Pacheco. Marta made a three-day bus trip to Rio de Janeiro to join the Vasco da Gama club.
Marta represented Brazil in the 2002 under-20 Women’s World Cup and she moved up to the national squad the following year. She was voted Fifa Women’s World Player of the Year 5 years running from 2006 to 2010. In the 2007 Women’s World Cup Marta won the Golden Ball for best player and Golden Boot as top scorer. She has won silver medals in two Olympics and was disappointed to be knocked out in the semi-finals at the 2016 Rio Games.
Marta has played for clubs in Europe and the United States, as well as Brazil. She reached the final of the UEFA Women’s Cup (now the Women’s Champions League) twice with Swedish club Umeå IK.
Marta is considered the best female soccer player in history, celebrated for her skill, speed, and finesse. She had to be tough to make it in Brazil, a country where the women’s game was banned from 1941 to 1979 for being unfeminine.
Women’s soccer still faces huge inequality. A 2017 survey found that top male player Neymar, who is from Brazil like Marta, earned the same as all 1,693 players in the top seven women’s football leagues combined. His salary from Paris Saint-Germain FC was 1,150 times more than Marta’s from Orlando Pride. There is still a long, long way to go.
Venus Williams
Tennis Player
(b.1980)
Long before Venus Ebone Starr Williams was born, her father Richard dreamed of having a child who was a tennis star. He saw the sport as a path out of poverty—a way to break free from the ghetto. He and his wife Oracene learned all about the game from books and videos. When their four-year-old daughter Venus showed promise, they began to coach her on local public courts. Soon Venus’s younger sister Serena joined in the training. The girls gave each other support and healthy competition.
By the age of ten, Venus could serve a ball at 160 km/h (100 mph), and at 14 she took up tennis professionally. Venus’s debut at the US Open was in 1997. She ranked only 66th in the world but reached the final—the first unseeded player to do so.
“When you lose, you’re more motivated. When you win, you fail to see your mistakes and probably no one can tell you anything.”
In 2000 Venus won two Grand Slams (Wimbledon and the US Open) and two Olympic gold medals (for the women’s singles and doubles) in Sydney, Australia.
Venus stayed at the top of her game for years in spite of injuries and having to cope with an autoimmune disease. She wasn’t the first African American to win a Grand Slam—Althea Gibson achieved that in 1956—but she ushered in a new, powerful way of playing. Venus succeeded by trusting her own individuality—and that makes her an example for people in all walks of life, not just tennis.
Serena Williams
Tennis Player
(b.1981)
Born 15 months after her sister Venus, Serena Jameka Williams has profited from her parents’ determination to make their daughters tennis stars. She was included in her sister’s training sessions, and the girls started entering tennis tournaments when Serena was age five.
One year after Venus became a professional player, Serena followed in her footsteps. She went on to win the US Open in 1999—a year before her big sister. However, her real breakthrough year was 2002, when she won a Grand Slam hat-trick—the French Open, US Open, and Australian Open.
Winning the Olympic gold and all four Grand Slam tournaments is known as a Career Golden Slam. In 2002 Serena became the second woman to achieve one in the singles (Steffi Graf was the first). Playing in the doubles, the Williams sisters have completed two Career Golden Slams!
“The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up.”
Serena’s win at the 2017 Australian Open took her total Grand Slam singles titles to a record-breaking 23. The victory was all the more extraordinary because she was 8 weeks pregnant at the time.
Like Venus, Serena plays with a forceful, athletic style. Her career has been inspirational, especially to young black players. Serena and her sister have been trailblazers for much-needed diversity in the sport.
Bessie Coleman
Aviator
(1892–1926)
Texas, USA, still had segregation laws when Bessie Coleman was born there in 1892. It was nearly 30 years since slavery had been abolished, but many white people still held racist views and often treated black people as inferior.
Bessie was the tenth of 13 children. Her father was mixed-race (Cherokee and African-American) and her mother was African-American. They were farmhands. Bessie helped out in the fields, but she also had an education. She went to a segregated school and had one term at the African-American university in Langston, Oklahoma.
When she was 23, Bessie went to live in Chicago and worked as a nail technician. She became fascinated by flying. Newspapers were full of stories about the brave pilots returning from World War I. Aviation was still very new. The first powered flight had only happened in 1903.
No American flying school would take Bessie because she was mixed-race and a woman. She got the idea of going to France, where there was less discrimination, from Robert Abbott, who ran Chicago’s biggest black newspaper. He and Jesse Binga, owner of Chicago’s first African-American bank, helped to fund Bessie’s trip.
Bessie went to the best flight school in France at Le Crotoy. Aircraft were dangerously flimsy in those early days and some of Bessie’s fellow students died during training.
In June 1921 Bessie earned her international pilot’s license. She was the first black woman pilot. Bessie decided to make a living as a “barnstormer” or stunt pilot. Barnstorming was a popular entertainment in the 1920s.
On 3 September 1922 Bessie took part in an air show on Long Island, New York. It was the first of many. A skilled and dedicated pilot, Bessie wowed audiences by flying upside down, rolling, diving, and looping-the-loop. She became known as “Queen Bessie.”
“The air is the only place free from prejudices.”
Bessie wanted to break down racial barriers. She refused to perform to segregated audiences and she also gave talks about aviation to African Americans in churches, halls, and schools. She was saving up to start the first black flying school when she tragically died on in April 1926. She fell to her death during a rehearsal for a stunt show and her mechanic also died in the accident. Thousands came to Bessie’s funeral to pay their respects. To this day, African-American pilots mark the anniversary of her death by flying over her grave and dropping flowers.
Bessie’s dream of a black flight school did become reality. In 1929 African-American army pilot William Powell opened the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles.
Yusra Mardini
Swimmer
(b.1998)
A gifted swimmer from Damascus, Syria, Yusra Mardini became an Olympic athlete against all odds. After the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011, Yusra’s home city was repeatedly bombed. Still, she continued to train and in 2012 she represented her country at the World Swimming Championships.
Three years later, Yusra and her sister fled
Syria. When the engine of the boat carrying them broke down, they jumped into the sea and pushed it, together with another refugee. Their heroic swim to safety took more than three hours. The Mardini sisters eventually found a new home in Berlin, Germany. In 2016 Yusra competed at the Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil. Although she didn’t win a medal, her story was an inspiration to people everywhere.
Terezinha Guilhermina
Sprinter
(b.1978)
Often described as the fastest blind woman in the world, the Brazilian Paralympian Terezinha Guilhermina was born with a disease that slowly destroyed her eyesight. Five of her 12 brothers have the same condition.
When Terezinha was 22, she joined a training scheme for disabled athletes in her home city of Betim. At first she swam, because she couldn’t afford running shoes. After her sister gave her a pair, Terezinha took up sprinting. Since then she has competed in four Paralympic Games and achieved world records for different races in her category T11, which is for totally blind athletes. She sprints blindfolded, alongside a sighted guide runner.
Krystyna Skarbek
Wartime spy
(1908–52)
Known as Winston Churchill’s “number one spy,” Krystyna Skarbek (who later changed her name to Christine Granville) was a Polish countess. She moved to Britain after Germany invaded her country in September 1939, causing the outbreak of World War II. Determined to join the fight against Germany, Krystyna entered the British Secret Service or SOE. She was its first female special agent and its longest serving one.
Krystyna was brave, daring, and dedicated to protecting her new home country. On one mission she skied out of German-occupied Poland with evidence that the Nazis were planning to invade Soviet Russia hidden in her glove. She also helped in the fight to free France. Krystyna was awarded the George Cross, an OBE, and the Croix de Guerre for her courage and service.
Anne Bonny
Pirate
(c.1698–c.1782)
Anne Cormac was born in Ireland but her parents soon emigrated to the United States. When Anne was 13, her mother died of typhoid fever. Anne married a pirate called James Bonny when she was 16—against her father’s will—but the relationship didn’t last.
Anne was very unconventional. She left her husband to join the ship of a pirate called Calico Jack. Pirating was a man’s world, but Anne was so daring that she won the respect of the all-male crew. Eventually, in 1720, the authorities caught up with Anne’s ship. The whole crew was sentenced to death by hanging. However, Anne’s life was spared because she was pregnant. After her release, Anne decided to stop being a pirate and live a quiet, law-abiding life.
Amna Al Haddad
Weightlifter
(b.1989)
Asimple walk in the park changed Amna Al Haddad’s life. She was 19 at the time, suffering from depression, and taking antidepressants. She ate junk food, never exercised, slept 12 hours a day, and didn’t have any friends. Amna is open about how she felt: “I was at one of the lowest points in my life, with no hope that the future could be better.”
She couldn’t go on as she was, so Amna decided to change. She went for a walk around nearby Safa Park on the outskirts of her home city, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Amna’s next step was to join a gym. As soon as she tried weightlifting, she loved it. It was perfect for making her more resilient (able to bounce back). As Amna’s physical health improved, so did her mental wellbeing.
Building up her strength wasn’t Amna’s biggest challenge. Dubai has a strict code of conduct based on Islamic laws. For a long time it was taboo for women to take part in sports. They were only allowed to be weightlifters from 2000. Amna had such passion for her chosen sport that she was ready to challenge convention and show that Muslim women can be powerful athletes.
By 2012—just five years after taking up weightlifting—Amna was ranked 77th out of 170 women in Asia after she competed in the Reebok Crossfit Games Open. She set herself an ambitious goal—to represent the UAE in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Amna gave up her job as a journalist to be a full-time weightlifter. Whenever she competed, she made headlines. She was often the only Emirati to compete or the first woman in a hijab.
“Women have the right to choose what to wear as athletes, and religious beliefs should never be a barrier to pursuing sports.”
In 2015 Amna won six gold and three silver medals in the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Asian Interclub Championships. Nike offered her a sponsorship deal and she worked with the brand to develop its first sport hijab. Amna applauded Nike for making sports more accessible to Muslim girls and women who chose to wear the hijab as a sign of modesty. At the same time, she also made it clear that she supported all Muslim sportswomen—whether they wore the hijab or not.
Amna qualified for the Rio Games, but had to pull out because of an injury to her lower back. However, her example has inspired more Muslim women and girls to follow their dreams. Through her honesty, Amna has removed some of the stigma around depression. She is also living proof that exercise is a fantastic way to improve mental health.
Jessica Watson
Sailor and Writer
(b.1993)
In May 2010 thousands of people gathered at Sydney Harbour, Australia, to welcome home an extraordinary teenager. Sailor Jessica Watson, then 16 years old, was returning from a 210-day solo journey around the world. She was the youngest person to sail non-stop around the world.
Some people criticized Jessica’s parents for letting her go, especially since she had crashed into a freighter (large ship) during a test run. There were also concerns about how Jessica would cope with being alone for so long.
Jessica faced challenging moments. During one especially vicious storm, the wind picked up her yacht Ella’s Pink Lady and threw it into the base of a towering wave. The boat was knocked onto its side at least seven times during the journey.
“You don’t have to be someone special to achieve something big. You just have to have a dream, believe in it, and work hard.”
Jessica wrote a blog, which was read by people around the globe. She documented her difficulties, but also described the amazing wildlife she encountered. The supportive messages that she received from her followers really helped to boost her morale. After she returned home, Jessica wrote a book about her experiences called True Spirit.
In 2011 Jessica was named Young Australian of the Year. She is a Youth Ambassador for the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), which works to end hunger.
Marina Raskova
War Pilot and Navigator
(1912–43)
When Marina Malinina was growing up in Moscow, Russia, she dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps and becoming an opera singer. But her ambitions changed while she was at school and she focused on chemistry instead. Marina left high school in 1929, seven years after her country had become part of the Soviet Union. Marina worked as a chemist in a dye factory, met an engineer called Sergei Raskov, and married.
In 1931 Marina went to work for the Soviet Air Force. She became its first female navigator. In 1934 Marina became the first woman to teach at the Zhukovsky Air Academy in Moscow. She also set many long-distance flying records. In 1938 Marina was one of the first women to receive a Hero of the Soviet Union award.
Marina Raskova urges the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to allow women pilots, september 1941:
“You know, they are running away to the front all the same—they are taking things into their own hands—and it will be worse, you understand, if they steal planes to go.”
After World War II had started, Marina called for women to be allowed to fly as military pilots. As a result, the women’s flying corps was formed. It was made up of three regiments, each containing about 400 women—mechanics, engineers, and navigators, as well as pilots.
Marina commanded the dive-bombing regiment until she died in battle in 1943. She was given a state funeral in recognition of her bravery, and was later awarded
the Order of Patriotic War 1st Class.
Gertrude Bell
Diplomat, Spy, Archaeologist, Mountaineer, and Writer
(1868–1926)
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born into a wealthy family in County Durham, England. Her mother died when she was three years old, and her father remarried when she was seven. Gertrude’s parents encouraged her to go to university, which was unusual at the time. She studied modern history at Lady Margaret Hall, one of Oxford University’s first women’s colleges, and was awarded a first-class degree.
In 1892 Gertrude visited her uncle, who was a British diplomat in Tehran, Persia (now Iran). She learned to speak Persian before her visit. While she was there she translated a book of Persian poetry into English and wrote her first travel book, Persian Pictures.
Gertrude became a keen and fearless climber. In 1902 she became stuck in a blizzard while scaling the highest peak in the Swiss Alps, the Finsteraarhorn. She earned the respect of mountaineers after she survived dangling off a rope for two days. The 2,632-m (8,635 ft) Gertrudespitze is named after her.
101 Awesome Women Who Changed Our World Page 8
