In a few months, Ohio will be home to one of a few public monuments dedicated to the work women did to secure the right to vote, and the continuous efforts for equality. The installation of the Ohio Women’s Monument began Wednesday on the Statehouse grounds.
The monument will feature four granite columns with the names of notable Ohio women etched on them, and bronze figures on three of those columns, with the fourth left open for future generations.
A bill sponsored by former state lawmaker Stephanie Kunze created the commission that brought the monument plan together.
“Nationally, less than 8% of all public statues depict real women," Kunze said. "Women deserve to see themselves and their accomplishments represented in public spaces. And Ohio is taking an important step in closing this representation gap. We cannot be what we cannot see.”
A national artist search was conducted, and sculptor Brenda Councill was selected to design and construct the monument. Councill lives in North Carolina but has been working on the monument in Zanesville.
She said visitors will be able to move among the four columns to see the bronze statues and read the names. Councill is currently working on the final statue, of a young girl with an outstretched hand who will stand on the ground looking up at a column.
“This monument is meant to be experienced, not simply observed. It invites people to walk among these figures, to reflect and to respond, to see activism not as history, but as a living, ongoing going pursuit,' Councill said. "Each figure in the monument is depicted with purpose and intent, representing women from each era, including the present. The commitment to activism of these women is unmistakable."
The monument is expected to be unveiled this fall.
Two-thirds of the monument’s $2.5 million cost has been secured. Of the $1.7 million raised so far, $1 million came from an anonymous donation to honor the late JoAnn Davidson, the first and only woman to serve as speaker of the Ohio House. The last two Supreme Court chief justices in Ohio have been women, and three of the seven current justices are women. Ohio has had one woman governor in Nancy Hollister, who served for 11 days at the start of 1999 between the terms of Republicans George Voinovich and Bob Taft.
But only a little over a third of the lawmakers in the Ohio General Assembly—46 of the 132 members of the House and Senate—are women. Four of the 15 members of Congress from Ohio are women, and all are Democrats, including the longest-serving woman in Congressional history, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH 9). Ohio has never had a woman U.S. Senator.
