Putting Women on a Pedestal: Rethinking Female Inclusion in Colonial Monuments

Abstract

As with many other types of public sculptures, there is a near-total absence of colonial monuments showing women, demonstrating a public failure to recognise their impact as colonisers and colonised people. When included at all, women are often portrayed as allegorical figures in colonial monuments. Their place is at the side-lines, serving and celebrating male colonial heroes. Indeed, very rarely is a woman at the centre of a colonial monument. But there are such monuments too. Two statues of Hannah Duston, an English colonist in North America, are illustrative examples of this; they have also become contested after the Rhodes Must Fall protests. However, recent attempts to decolonise public spaces have also increasingly tried to feminise them, not only by replacing contested monuments but by adding new female figures. This article examines how women have been included in colonial monuments by addressing both past and recent portrayals in different countries. It addresses questions of and relationships between colonial power, identity and gender, showing parallels and divergences in female inclusion in colonial monuments across different places and times.