So, Americans' top choice for the woman to replace Hamilton on the $10 bill is Elinor Roosevelt:
But maybe, if the goal here is to break men’s stranglehold on the currency, we shouldn’t start with someone whose appearance on the $10 will ensure that nearly every conversation about it begins this way: “Isn’t her husband much more deserving?” Because he is, you know. Like him or not.
[. . .]
Maybe part of the reason for Roosevelt’s support is the unspoken assumption that the currency should be reserved for influential heads of state and other former high-ranking government officials. That leaves the pickings mighty slim if you’re intent on featuring a woman. Eleanor Roosevelt may well be the closest thing America has to a beloved woman former president — for now. At a moment when America is poised to hand the presidency to someone whose greatest accomplishment was marrying well, maybe it’s fitting that FDR’s better half, rather than FDR himself, ends up on the money.
The obvious observation is that others on the list of potentials are more deserving, especially Harriet Tubman and Amelia Earhart. And how about a good word for Elinor Ostram, the Hoosier who won a Nobel Prize for her economic theories involving the commons, who died a couple of years ago? Why does it have to be somebody long dead?
