First Woman Statue Unveiled in Parliament Square

The first statue of a woman in Parliament Square was unveiled on Tuesday to an excited audience of politicians, feminists and journalists alike. Millicent Fawcett, a suffragist campaigner who was instrumental in earning women the right to vote, now joins the figures of eleven men outside of the Palace of Westminster.

Less than 3% of all statues within the UK are of women, and it was writer and campaigner Caroline Criado Perez who came up with the idea to dedicate a statue to Fawcett. Perez was also responsible for leading the campaign to get author Jane Austen on the new ten pound notes. The campaigner said of the statue today: “I can’t really take the whole thing in. It’s too big really to contemplate that it’s finally happening.”

Millicent Fawcett is widely regarded as the woman who began paving the way for women’s right to vote in Britain. She began leading peaceful movements to earn universal suffrage, from petitioning Parliament to writing to MPs. When women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote 100 years ago on 6th February this year, Ms Fawcett was, unlike many other women involved in the campaign for equality, alive to reap the rewards of her unyielding patience and campaigning.

Prime Minister Theresa May was present for the unveiling of Fawcett’s statue, sculpted by Gillian Wearing, said: “I would not be standing here today as prime minister, no female MPs would have taken their seats in Parliament, none of us would have had the rights and protections we now enjoy, were it not for one truly great woman – Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett.”