Where are the women ?
In 2020, for the commemoration of the 19th Amendment in the United-States, a statue was unveiled in Central Park, New York. The monument is a bronze and granite statue depicting three women who took part in the Women’s Rights Movement — Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony as well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument was thus campaigned for by Monumental Women, an organization which planned many events to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment across the United-States. The statue was designed by artist Meredith Bergmann. It is in August 2020 that the first statue portraying real-life women was unveiled in Central Park, New York. Central Park used to be the home for twenty-two statues of men figures[1] but none of historical women figures. In a podcast, Pam Elam, president of Monumental Women said: “How many millions of people walked over Central Park over all these years and so many of them never noticed that real women were missing. What does that say about the discrimination women faced and the invisibility?”[2] Today, it is possible to wander through Central Park and to come across the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument. But if one’s chances to encounter monuments celebrating women remains smaller than the chances to encounter monuments celebrating men, how is one to know where to find memorialized women in the streets? Crowdsourced maps exist online and allow people to search for monuments commemorating women. In 2021, a crowdsourcing project was born at the LERMA (Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone) — the Citizen Science Project : Mapping the Memorials to the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The aim of the project was and still is to “create a crowd-sourced map of the memorials to the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the World.”[3] When visiting the map, one is able to search the world and to find monuments commemorating women who took part in the suffrage movement by clicking on buttons (which are of different colors to differentiate the different types of sites of memory) and to learn more about the monuments. For example, when searching in the United-States, it is possible to find the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument located in New York and to read the information that accompanies the statue. Thanks to the map, visitors can learn more about the location, by whom the monument was campaigned for, funded by or authorized by and about the woman or women represented. You can contribute to the map by filling the following form we’ve created. If you ever come across a monument celebrating the suffrage movement, do not hesitate to share it with the project so that women who participated in the suffrage movement across the world can be rendered visible.
During my year as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant I had the opportunity to see the monument with my own eyes after working on it for my M1 research paper.
[1] Stephanie Eckardt. “Central Park, Home to 22 Statues of Men, Will Add a Statue of Real Women Fort the First Time Ever.” Wmagazine, July 24, 2018. https://www.wmagazine.com/story/central-park-statue-real-women-susan-b-anthony-elizabeth-cady-stanton/.
[2] Robin Morgan. WMC Live #318: Pam Elam., 2020.
[3] Hypotheses. “Citizen Science Project: Mapping the Memorials to the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” n.d. https://wfw.hypotheses.org/our-new-project/in-public-spaces-2/citizen-science-project-mapping-the-memorials-to-the-womens-suffrage-movement.
Bibliography
Hypotheses. “Citizen Science Project: Mapping the Memorials to the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” n.d. https://wfw.hypotheses.org/our-new-project/in-public-spaces-2/citizen-science-project-mapping-the-memorials-to-the-womens-suffrage-movement.
Meredith Bergmann. “Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument.” Meredith Bergmann, 2020. https://meredithbergmann.com/public-art-commissions/womens-rights-pioneers-monument-central-park-nyc.
Robin Morgan. WMC Live #318: Pam Elam., 2020.
Stephanie Eckardt. “Central Park, Home to 22 Statues of Men, Will Add a Statue of Real Women Fort the First Time Ever.” Wmagazine, July 24, 2018. https://www.wmagazine.com/story/central-park-statue-real-women-susan-b-anthony-elizabeth-cady-stanton/.
Pictures of the Monument were taken by the author of this article.
Links in the Text
Map of “Sites of Feminist Memory: A Map of Memorials to the Women’s Suffrage Movement” : https://framacarte.org/fr/map/sites-of-feminist-memory-a-map-of-memorials-to-the_82076#4/31.99/-60.47
Form to contribute to the map: https://columbo.univ-amu.fr/index.php/839345?lang=en
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
abardivia (29 mai 2023). Where are the women ? EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/oe7n


