Four Women to Equal One George Washington

Can women be on money? The answer is yes, but only if it’s quarters and only if it’s on the back of the coin. The U.S. Mint has announced that next year will mark the beginning of the American Women Quarters™ Program. From 2022 to 2025, five new quarters will be released annually, each displaying a different woman’s face (on the back).

Next year, you’ll be able to use the faces of Sally Ride, Maya Angelou, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong when doing especially female things like laundry or buying a can of Diet Coke at the corner store. George Washington will still be on the front of the coin, but with a feminist twist: the new woman quarters feature a design from the late artist Laura Gardin Fraser that was originally recommended for the 1932 quarter. Now, 89 years after that recommendation and 55 years after her death, we’re getting her coin. Slay.

Apparently it is much easier to put women on the backs of coins than it is to put them on an actual bill. President Biden promised early in his term that his administration would try to “speed up” the process of putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Obviously that has not yet happened, and ATMs across the country are still spitting out the visage of Andrew Jackson.

So for the time being we have to settle for the backs of quarters when looking for female representation in our cash, unless you still have one of those Sacagawea gold dollars kicking around somewhere. Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but he did put a woman’s worth at one whole dollar.