Reframing Beauty by Anita Selzer

Author:Anita Selzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd
Published: 2023-01-14T04:32:50+00:00

CHAPTER SIX:

WOMEN PERFORMING BEAUTY

In chapter five, we learned about amazing young girls performing beauty by doing fantastic things to help others in various ways and care for our environment. Chapter six looks at the lives of women who are also performing beauty by doing wonderful things to aid others and making or trying to make our world a better place in some way.

Like the selection of ten girls, I have also chosen ten women who have touched me through their character and/or the work they do. I believe they are making a difference through their work: paid and unpaid. They are a diverse group from different parts of the globe and are written about here in no particular order. The women selected are also change-makers or trying to bring about some kind of change that will benefit society. Some are better known than others. They are wonderful role models in performing beauty and opened my eyes in the multitude and various ways this can be accomplished.

SEGENET KELEMU: SCIENTIST AND MOLECULAR PLANT PATHOLOGIST

Through her work as a scientist and plant pathologist, Segenet Kelemu performs beauty by trying to reduce poverty, increase food security and help to care for the environment and people’s health. Her focus is to solve scientifically based problems in Africa that also apply globally. ‘I wanted to live a purposeful life contributing to society.’

‘I want to make a difference for people who are not able to solve a problem for themselves (like farmers). As a scientist, I’m fortunate that I’m given this priceless knowledge and education. So I have to use it,’ she says.

As an Ethiopian girl, she broke the mould and carved out a big career as a scientist who has worked around the world. The scientist shares that she defied the cultural norms placed on and expected of women raised in her remote conservative Ethiopian village. ‘I had done all of the back-breaking work that was somehow reserved by the society for women and children: the weeding, the picking of coffee berries, the collection of firewood, the fetching of water, the washing clothes, the grinding and pounding of grains, the carrying of farm produce to long-distance markets. The work was endless… Amidst all those chores I had to do, I focused on and excelled in school, perhaps because I understood early on that good education was my only ticket for getting out of poverty.’

In Ethiopia, school was free except for notebooks, pens and pencils that her parents paid for. Kelemu is one of seven children and once they had their own income, her older brothers invested in her (higher) education.

Kelemu graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor degree in Ethiopia, then went to America and earned a Master of Science degree in plant pathology and genetics, followed by a doctorate (PhD) in molecular biology and plant pathology. She went on to work as a senior scientist in Columbia, South America and in research of plant pathology. But Kelemu felt she had to return

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