An interesting concept has emerged to challenge gender financial equality globally and it involves following Australia’s lead and pushing for more outstanding women to appear on bank notes.
UK payments company, Merchant Machine, has analysed the top legal tender currencies around the world and found that 88% of the world’s banknotes feature men over women as the faces of their notes. This figure then rises to 91% when we exclude the UK’s monarch, Queen Elizabeth.
The Danish krone, Swedish krona, and Australian dollar are the only currencies with an equal number of women and men on banknotes.
Despite this finding, it’s difficult to say if having equal men to women on banknotes in Australia is key to creating gender equality in societies.
The Financy Women’s Index shows it is likely to take 101 years for financial gender equality to be achieved in Australia.
Australia also recently ranked 50th on a global score for gender equality, while Denmark ranked 29th and Sweden 5th, according to the World Economic Forum.
The United States was better placed than Australia at 30th, while India was 140th and China didn’t rank.
The US, China and India have never featured a woman on their bank notes. Can you believe it!
Nonetheless, Merchant Machine has proposed six of the most influential women of today to replace and create equal banknotes for the future.
Kamala Harris
Net Worth: $6,300,000.00
Kamala Harris is the first female Vice President in history, first Indian-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate and the first African-American and first woman to serve as California’s attorney general.
Taylor Swift
Net Worth: $365,000,000.00
Taylor Swift is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, winning 10 Grammys and other awards and produced two of the top 10 2020 best selling albums during the pandemic. The American popstar is also one of the key pioneers of LGBT rights.
Oprah Winfrey
Net Worth: $2,600,000,000.00
Oprah Winfrey is the first black female billionaire and has transformed her hit talk show, which ran for 25 years, into a media and business empire.
Serena Williams
Net Worth: $200,000,000.00
Serena Williams was the former world No. 1 in women’s singles tennis and has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most wins by any player in the Open Era and the second-most grand slam wins of all time.
Angela Merkel
Net Worth: $11,500,000.00
Angela Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany and served a commendable 4 terms. She acted as a de facto leader to Europe, leading the region’s largest economy and Germany from financial crisis back to financial growth.
Greta Thunberg
Net Worth: $1,000,000.00
Thunberg is internationally renowned for challenging world leaders to take action against climate change. She led 4 million people across the globe in the largest climate change demonstration in history on September 20, 2019, as well as starting a worldwide movement called the “How dare you” speech.
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