WOMEN IN POWER

pharaoh

queen

president

prime minister

chancellor

 

1.  What do they all the words have in common?

 

 

2.  Think of the first person you associate with 

 

 each word.

 

  

3.  Apart from the queen, how many of the other people that came to mind are women?

 

4. Read the text below.

When it comes to power, the unfortunate truth is that men still rule the world. And while this situation is changing, change is very slow.

These days, it’s still hard to name more than a handful of modern female leaders. But there are, and have been, women with great power.

How many can you name?

 

 

 

A.       She was born in Chicago in the United States in 1947 and has two younger brothers called Hugh and Tony. She studied at Yale law school, and started working as a lawyer in the 1970s. In 1975 she got married to Bill. The couple have a daughter called Chelsea. She became First Lady of the United States in January 1993. She was the first First Lady to have a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career. Until recently, she was the United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama.

 

 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

 

 

B. She was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in 1925 in Grantham, England. Her father was a shopkeeper.

She studied chemistry at Oxford University and worked as a research chemist before becoming a Member of Parliament in 1959. She became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, and in 1979 became Britain’s first ever woman Prime Minister. Famous for her strong personality, she was often called the Iron Lady. She played an

important role in the downfall of communism in the Soviet Union and the victory of capitalism in many parts of the world.

 

 

 

 MARGARET THATCHER

C. She was born in Hamburg in West Germany in 1954, but grew up in communist East Germany. Her father was a priest in the Lutheran church, and moved to the East to defend Christianity under communism. She was excellent at maths, sciences and languages, and in 1978 she got a doctorate in physics. In 1989, when

the Berlin Wall came down, she became involved in the democracy movement, and in 1990, she became a member of the political party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

She became Germany’s first woman Chancellor in 2005, and is probably the most powerful woman in the world today.

 

 

 

 

 ANGELA MERKEL

 

D. When in 2002 the BBC organised a vote to choose the greatest Briton  (person from Britain), this woman came seventh in the list. (The only woman above her was Princess

Diana.) Her father was King Henry VIII, famous for having six wives, and she was Queen of England from 1558 till her death in 1603. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, she never married.

She was highly educated and ruled at the time when England defeated the Spanish Armada and established its first colony in America (Virginia, named after her), and when Shakespeare wrote his plays.

 

 

 

 

 

 QUEEN ELIZABETH I

 

E. She was in the news in 2007, when experts decided that an unidentified mummy first found over 100 years ago was that of this great female pharaoh, who ruled ancient Egypt in the 15th century BC. Although less famous than  Cleopatra and Nefertiti, she was more powerful than both and ruled for 22 years. Her funerary

temple is one of the most visited in Egypt. She was known for dressing like a male pharaoh and wearing a false beard. Archaeologists used DNA analysis and a missing tooth, which exactly matched a relic from the same period, to help identify her.

 

 

 

   QUEEN HATSHEPSUT