Memorializing Women’s History
“In January, 2000, after seven years of planning and fundraising, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue Committee announced its five design finalists. As soon as the names were released, local artists reacted with outrage and collected over 100 signatures in protest. It turns out that the five finalists, selected from a gender-balanced pool of 49 men and women designers, were all male…The Statue Committee announced in February that the list of design finalists had been increased to ten and that five women have been added to the original list. ‘The process that chose the first five men had integrity and was fair, but we had to have a gender-balanced diverse pool,’ said one committee member.”(1)
Should women designers have been equally represented in the final pool? If the original process was “fair,” why were five women added later? Not surprisingly, the committee’s solution did not satisfy anyone, nor should we have expected it to bring the dispute to a close. At the heart of this controversy lies the paradox of gender equality: a desire for equality in the face of differences. Adding five female designers to the list of five male designers was a clear nod to quantitative equality of representation within the pool of finalists. Yet the action also reflected the persistent belief that women are somehow different from men in important ways and that the designs they submitted would therefore be qualitatively different from those submitted by the men. These two perspectives on gender equality appear inconsistent and yet have acted in tandem throughout history, rendering the story of women’s integration into public life complex and unfinished even as we begin a new century.
What do you think?
In which instance did the Statue Committee treat men and women equally: when they selected the designs from among a gender-balanced pool of designers or when they made sure that the list of finalists included an equal number of men and women?
Who would be in the best position to memorialize women’s history? Are both men and women equally capable of celebrating the contributions of a woman like Sojourner Truth? In what ways might men and women differ in their approach to the task? In what ways might a difference in how men and women approach the task matter?(2)
1. “Women Added to Finalists for Abolitionist’s Statue,” New York Times, Sunday, 20 February 2000, p. A-24.
2. On April 1, 2001, Thomas Jay Warren was selected to create the statue of Sojourner Truth. You can see an image of the statue at http://www.noho.com/sojourner/artist_search.html.