When Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that a woman would be featured on the $10 bill, more than a few people made the joke that the bill would then be worth only $7.80 due to the alleged gender pay gap.
The sexism goes deeper than that, however, and leave it to Politico to uncover the problematic truth in a feature by Ruth Graham.
Putting a woman on the $10 means giving her the WORST of all the denominations http://t.co/Qu9LREJD3h
— Blake News (@blakehounshell) June 25, 2015
An interview with no less an authority than Douglass Mudd, curator and museum director of the Edward C. Rochette Money Museum in Colorado Springs, proves what some might have already suspected. Not only is paper money on its way out, but of all the smaller bills, the ten is the least used of the most used bills.
“Of the most-used notes, it’s the least important,” admits Mudd. And what seemed like a small victory for feminism, writes Graham, is really “just the latest episode in a long pattern of women getting the least-valuable placements on American currency,” such as the barely circulated dollar coins featuring Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony.
Guess which bill we don't use? Yup, the $10. Women get the bad seat again. Go @publicroad! http://t.co/NvdLCUmxds pic.twitter.com/YixW3oT0ZT
— Steve Heuser (@sfheuser) June 24, 2015
Join the conversation as a VIP Member