Gendered Currency

As a little side research project, while I am interning at the Smithsonian, I have been trying to determine why most women are just not attracted to coin collecting. With almost all of my history papers, they somehow take a gendered stance, so I decided to bring that knowledge and apply it to the Smithsonian. Through this research I hope that I can contribute some insight towards the Numismatic's traveling exhibition on coins, perhaps discovering ways to attract female visitors.

Before I started researching on this topic, I thought of what might make money and money collecting a more "masculine" field. First of all, I figured that currency historically has been controlled by those in power, which of course mainly means men. And for the most part, powerful men are featured on both American (and foreign) currency. I am sure that this sort of mindset still has filtered down to today and lead to why a majority of coin collectors are male.

A little bit of brief researched backed up my assumption. From Horizonlines.org (a site on collecting) states, “Coin collecting has been said to be the hobby of kings and scholars. Coins are regarded as mirrors of history; portraits of contemporary monarchs—some famous, others scarcely known except for coins—and the inscriptions and designs often refer to important events.” (Eide, Laurel "Stamps licked by time; coins make change.") This further demonstrates that along with coins being collected by those in power, money was often imprinted with portraits of those men in power. Even from the ancient times, coins were already gendered.

I know I have quite a bit more research to do, but I wanted to share my results so far. I hope with further research I can also figure out why, when famous women are placed on American currency, these coins have not been popular in society. Take for example the Susan B. Anthony dollar or even the Sacajawea dollar. Both series were failed attempts at both circulating currency with American female icons and the American gold dollar. Look for an upcoming post with hopefully more research on this fascinating and unexplored topic!