Women on British banknotes

Caroline Criado-Perez started a campaign on Change.org after it was announced that Winston Churchill would replace the last remaining women featured on British bank notes, apart from the Queen. To combat this all male line-up, Caroline created the 'We need women on British banknotes' petition and presented it to the Bank of England. Thanks to 35,000 signatories and legal threats, The Bank of England announced that from 2017 the female author Jane Austen will appear on the new ten pound note. 

The success of this campaign was largely due to harnessing the power of social media and having a clear and achievable goal. In this NewStatesman article Criado-Perez added, "It's a really good jumping off point to talk about wider issues about how we expect public institutions to behave and women's representation overall in lots of different areas."

 

Photo credit: Vicki Couchman