Just days away from International Women’s Day, Polish EU Lawmaker Janusz Korwin-Mikke, stood up in the EU parliament to voice his opinions on the wage gap between men and women.
He told legislature, “Of course women must earn less than men because they are weaker, they are smaller, they are less intelligent; they must earn less, that’s all.”
His sentence echoed, the seriousness in his voice was too authoritative and he had a smirk on his face.
It seemed he thought he had accomplished so much more in one statement than women had in years.
His argument is a slap in the face to women who have helped the world advance more than this man could ever imagine.
Has he forgot about Marie Curie, a Polish-born French chemist and physicist?
She’s a woman who developed the theory of radioactivity, discovered polonium and radium, founded techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and using them in the treatment of neoplasms.
The list of influential women is much longer than I can write. These women are a small handful of the women who have contributed to the world.
She developed mobile radiography units to supply x-ray services to field hospitals.
Outside of Europe, black women who worked for NASA were called “human computers.”
Mary Jackson was the first black female engineer in NASA in 1958. She was instrumental to NASA’s greater visibility. Jackson worked alongside men in several NASA divisions such as the subsonic-transonic aerodynamics division, the compressibility research division, full-scale research division and the high-speed aerodynamics division.
Katherine Johnson, another black American woman, advanced the United States further into their journey into space with her perfect calculations.
She played an important role in the success of the Apollo moon landing program.
Dorothy Vaughan was the first black woman to supervise a staff for NASA at the Langley Research Center in Virginia.
In that staff, she was directly supervising men.
These women made incredible advancements for the NASA team in the United States, while working alongside other men with the same positions.
And there are, of course, women who have made significant impact on the lives of today. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education.
Many know her for receiving the Nobel Prize. Yes, Korwin-Mikke, there is a female that is intelligent and brave enough to stand up for what she believes in.
We also can’t forget Iratxe Garcia Perez , the member of European parliament for Spain, who stood up for herself after Korwin-Mikke voiced his opinions.
Her final words came before she sat back down, “Now I think I need to defend European women from people like you.”
It seems like EU parliament agrees. As of Tuesday afternoon, Korwin-Mikke was suspended from his position due to the comments he made about women.
The list of influential women is much longer than I can write.
These women are a small handful of the many women who have contributed to the world. The strong female is in every female.
All women have potential in this world to strive beyond social criticism, to pick up boulders placed in their path and to inspire, whether it is another woman or a man.
You women are strong, intelligent — beyond small.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.