It's time to put a woman on the $20 bill

An online campaign is underway to supplant the seventh American president, Andrew Jackson, with a woman on the $20 bill.

Voting on the website Womenon20s.org has reached its final round, and the four finalists are: Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation; civil rights icon Rosa Parks; diplomat and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor.

The creators of Womenon20s.org say the best way to mark the 2020 centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote would be to put a woman on the $20 bill.

Last week, the virtual campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill got real, when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen introduced the Women on the Twenty Act in the U.S. Senate.

Her legislation would direct the U.S. Treasury secretary to convene a citizen panel to consider which woman should be on the $20.

This may seem like a trivial matter, especially when compared to, say, the prospect of a nuclear Iran. But it says something about how women are valued or not that we've yet to see a woman on our paper money, save for cameo appearances by Martha Washington on silver certificates in 1886 and 1891.

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