Yahoo Finance What your banknotes would look like if women were the face of them
The recent announcements of JMW Turner as the new face of the £20 note, and Alan Turing being featured on the new £50, have reignited the debate about gender representation on banknotes.
Research by trade finance provider Stenn found that of the 117 legal tender currencies around the world featuring people, 88% are men.
When excluding Queen Elizabeth, this figure rises to 91%. Only three currencies have a gender balance of less than 50% male when excluding the Queen – the Danish krone, Swedish krona, and Australian dollar.
READ MORE: Prince William favourite with Brits to feature on banknotes
In fact, 69 of the 177 currencies are 100% male, including the US dollar, Chinese yuan, and Indian rupee.
To redress this imbalance, Stenn replaced men with women on some of the world’s major banknotes. It chose women with the most Wikipedia page-views in the 18 months between January 2018 and June 2019, excluding living women and royalty.
For the UK, Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill is replaced on the £5 note by anti-imperialist and rebel Boudicca.
On the £20 note, the mother of computer programs Ada Lovelace – who was perhaps unlucky not to be chosen for the new £50 – replaces Adam Smith, the father of economics.
The £10 already shows a woman in Jane Austen, while it seemed unfair to remove Alan Turing from the £50 so soon after his announcement.
For the US, founding father Alexander Hamilton is replaced on the $10 with celebrated aviator and first woman to make a solo transatlantic flight, Amelia Earhart.
On the $100, Rosa Parks, who became an important face of the civil rights movement in 1955, after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, replaces Benjamin Franklin.
While Euro banknotes depict historical European architecture, not people, heroine of France and Roman Catholic saint Joan of Arc graces the €5 bill.
German-born actress Marlene Dietrich, who received the Medal of Freedom in 1947 for her humanitarian efforts during the second world war, is a good choice for the €10.
For Russia, Anna Pavlova, prima ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet graces the 100 ruble (₽100) bill.
Meanwhile, Chinese pirate leader Ching Shih replaces controversial Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 100 yuan (¥100) bill.
And first general of Japan Tomoe Gozen replaces Japanese bacteriologist Seisaku Noguchi on the 1,000 yen (¥1,000) note.
