In the old days, many girls and women didn’t have jobs. They stayed at home. Girls learned to cook and clean the house, as well as how to make and wash clothes. Why? So that when they grew up, they could get married and be a good wife and mother. Women who lived in the country often looked after a vegetable garden, kept chickens for eggs and sometimes had a goat or cow for milk, too. So as you can imagine, they were very busy. But people didn’t call these jobs and they didn’t pay women for doing them! In Britain in 1870, girls started going to school, but they left at the age of 12. Even rich people didn’t usually educate their girls after that age. At around that time, a few jobs also appeared that were open to women. For example, women were teachers, shop assistants and cooked in rich people’s kitchens. Some jobs were just for women, like nursing. But women did not become scientists, pilots or doctors. People didn’t think they had the skills or the brain to do these jobs. For some women, this wasn’t good enough. They wanted an education and they wanted to work. Women like Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie and Amelia Earhart followed their hearts and changed the world with their work. When people saw this, they changed their minds about what jobs suited women. Today in the UK, a girl can choose what job she wants to do and people don’t say, “Women can’t do that job.”