To think they could find at least ONE inspirational woman to put on our bank notes?

[MiniPenguinMaker]

I have to admit that I felt a bit miffed when I saw that Elizabeth Fry was being phased out and replaced by Winston Churchill from 2016.

There will be NO women left on British currency. Surely they could find a few? Emmeline Pankhurst perhaps?!

It gives the impression that the achievements of British women are not considered worthy of recognition. I have been getting really grumpy about this. I wonder who makes these decisions and whether this has even occurred to them. Am I being unreasonable to feel peeved that us women make up a significant proportion of the population and yet when we pay for things with our hard-earned cash it is a bunch of dead white men on there?

we do have a woman on our notes, surprised you didn't notice - Mary Slessor.

Nanny McPhee would pass the beard criteria

I nominate Jo Brand, Miranda Hart, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, JK Rowling, Zadie Smith, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Fiona Bruce, Clare Balding, Cath Kidston, Sandi Toksvig, Justine Roberts , Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Rebecca Adlington.

therma yes, yes, Nigella Lawson in a red silk nightie licking a chocolate cake!

put her on a fiver with a slogan " I feel like a million dollars!"

Rosalind Franklin has been largely forgotten because she did some beautiful crystallography and wrote a very dry methods paper whereas Watson and Crick came up with a more interesting interpretation of the data and used other things that were known about DNA to come up with much more complete picture of the nature of DNA.

If you wanted to cite a paper about DNA crystallography then you'd cite Franklins paper but if you wanted to say that DNA is a double helix where guanine and adenine pair with cytosine and thymine, respectively then you would cite Watson and Crick. They just made more of the results than she did. My PhD supervisor is always telling me to big up my results more - he says it's a problem that every female PhD student and postdoc he's supervised has had but not something the males suffer from.

They wouldn't have got their results if it wasn't for her, Queen. They won awards for this, she won... The least we can do is make sure she's acknowledged IMO.

I don't want someone on the bank note due to their sex - i would rather we had inspirational people on our notes

ivykaty, do you not think that there are any inspirational women?

Yes, I think it is a retrograde and regrettable step (if it happens)

I think Beatrix Potter could be good (with some of her best known characters) - and she gave a lot of land in Lake District to the National Trust too
Or Mary Anning (with the dinosaur she found)

I think they should think more about ways to make it more memorable and inspirational, especially for children. And that includes having women represented as well as men. Also creative people as well as scientists and politicians.

I don't know who Mary Anning is - but I seriously don't think that finding a dinosaur is an achievement!
it was there all along, she just got lucky - no different from me finding a fiver when cleaning the car.
unless she tracked down and captured a run away live dino I'm not impressed.

I like the Beatrix Potter idea. best so far

It's not a lot different to all of the people who've gotten recognition on the backs of their PhD students' hard slogs in the lab. She fluffed her chance at writing a seminal paper - if Watson and Crick hadn't seen her crystallography then her results might have gone largely unnoticed.

Most people think that Darwin came up with the whole idea of evolution when actually he was just the first to publish and suggest a mechanism for it. Wallace has been largely forgotten just like Franklin.

UK figures who spoke to the world: first up have to be Newton and Shakespeare (think da Vinci, Beethoven, Plato for other European icons). But Jane Austen is surely the next most exported writer/plot deviser, so she should be there. Never mind that I think she's a bit mean, she's massive and she is everywhere, culturally.

It's a fact of history that "public figures" have mostly been men. I get uncomfortable with "first woman X" stuff because it almost makes being a woman part of the achievement, if you see what I mean.

A lot of amazing women have been prominent in fields that are different, or possibly "soft" - I think Hattie Jacques or Yootha Joyce, or Marie Lloyd, are serious people to understand and admire. Given the nominations list is getting a bit showbizzy, why not flood those categories with women so that the BoE has Joyce Grenfell to choose instead of Arthur Askey? (no offence, Arthur)

She was an early pioneer of paleontology, she was born in 1799. She made many very important discoveries despite not having much access to the scientific community due to her sex and the fact she was poor. Her story is genuinely inspirational.

Here are some links

wiki

natural history museum

From nat hist:

"The greatest fossil hunter ever known was a woman from Lyme Regis. Mary Anning's discoveries were some of the most significant geological finds of all time. They provided evidence that was central to the development of new ideas about the history of the Earth.

Mary Anning (1799-1847).
Mary?s contribution had a major impact at a time when there was little to challenge the biblical interpretation of the story of creation and of the flood. The spectacular marine reptiles that Mary unearthed shook the scientific community into looking at different explanations for changes in the natural world. William Buckland, Henry de la Beche and William Conybeare were some of the many scientists who owe their achievements to her. By the time of her death, geology was firmly established as its own scientific discipline."

I really think such a casual dismissal of a person who you admit you have never heard of, as having done nothing more consequential than washing a car is a bit, well, short-sighted and ignorant if I'm entirely honest.

Have to say I'm a little bit at the idea that having women fairly represented would be tokenism.
There are so many appropriate women who could feature on notes, many of whom have been mentioned upthread, but I have another to add to the list -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicely_Saunders

have to say it doesnt bother me in the slightest.i cat remember the last time i held a banknote,always use my card or buy online.

nicetabard well if she was challenging the teachings of the Bible I'm most certainly not impressed.

The more scientists are trying to disprove that God exists the more scientific evidence they find that supports the conclusion the the Universe was intelligently designed.
or at the very least they are unable to disprove it.

Albert Einstein said "God does not play dice with the world."

He also said "I want to know how God created this world" and Stephen Hawkins pretty much figured it out, the Big Bang Theory is probably a very close explanation as to how God created everything out of nothing.

so challenge away Mary Anning or anyone else, science will only prove that God does exists - it has to, God created science too and He created our brains also to understand it.

(as to being short-sighted and ignorant, sure, in many ways I am both)

I really hope you're American amazingmumof6. I like to think that there is nobody in the UK who thinks the bible is a better source of knowledge than science.

Mary Anning was born in 1799.

I don't think you even looked at those links.

Do you believe that the dinosaurs existed?

Or do you believe in the literal story of creation, and that the dinosaur bones are some kind of hoax?

Actually maybe I won't bother.

I believe the queen is on them all

Amazingmum - it would be a shame to derail an interesting thread with an argument about God's existence, not least because it is actually not relevant.

If you actually read about Mary Anning, you would know she was devoutly religious. Her findings may have challenged the biblical story of creation, but she herself was not seeking to prove that God did not exist.

Nicetabard - I was debating backing away slowly too. But I just couldn't. Told DP who directed me to this!
xkcd.com/386/