Teaching Gender Equality through Public Monuments: Using the Monument(al) Challenges Toolkit and Europeana’s Sources to Explore Representation and Memory in the Classroom

If you were to count the statues in your local town, village, or city, how many would you find that represent women?

Despite women making up more than half of Europe’s population, most of the statues you’ll come across commemorate the lives and achievements of men. Even when women do appear in public art, they are often depicted not as specific individuals but as allegories — aesthetic or symbolic representations of abstract ideas such as liberty, justice or peace. This imbalance presents a powerful entry point for teaching gender equality in history. By exploring public monuments critically, history teachers can help students analyze not just what is remembered — but who is remembered, how, and why.

One powerful way to do this is through the Monument(al) Challenges Toolkit developed by EuroClio, alongside Europeana’s sources and collections.

About the tools

The Monument(al) Challenges Toolkit is a practical, ready-to-use educational package designed to help teachers and students investigate public monuments, question their meanings, and explore issues of representation, memory, and identity. The toolkit encourages critical thinking through inquiry-based learning and historical reasoning.

Europeana’s digital archive gives access to thousands of digitized historical sources, including photographs, documents, artworks, and audio-visual materials. These sources are rich and multilingual and can support deeper research into both well-known and overlooked historical figures — including women.

The Goddesses and the Queens

The world of religion has always given us female statues—just think of Greek and Roman goddesses like Aphrodite (Venus) and Athena (Minerva). And many Christian statues exist of female saints and, in particular, Mary, the mother of Jesus. While these representations are culturally significant, (for example, for believers Mary is not just a religious symbol but a real, historical woman whose life and role carry deep spiritual and human significance) they often they often emphasize idealized qualities or abstract virtues rather than focusing on the diverse and concrete achievements of women throughout history.

Even when statues portray actual women, royal figures dominate. In many countries, royal women are popular subjects for statues. In fact, it’s estimated that nearly half of the statues depicting women in the UK are of Queen Victoria. Other prominent royal women represented in sculpture include Queen Louise, Catherine the Great, and Empress Josephine.

From Allegory to Reality: Women in Monuments

Public monuments often feature female figures, but many do not accurately represent real women. They symbolize ideas. Think of:

Especially the last one reflects a deeper contrast: female forms symbolize abstract ideals, while real women are rarely depicted as historical agents. Meanwhile, men — not that often used to personify ideas — are the ones represented as the actual heroes, leaders, or fighters. In Cyprus, for instance, liberty is often visualized as a classical female figure. But the actual “freedom fighters,” the ones named and remembered, are almost always male, a vivid teaching example about representation, symbolism, and gender roles in public memory. Due to that, this particular monument, as several of the above, is considered contested (See Lesson plan p.93 of the Monument(al) Challenges Tool Kit).

Statues of Real Women: A Minority with a Message

Despite their underrepresentation, there are notable exceptions of women memorialized for their real lives and achievements:

Students can use Europeana’s digital collections to explore these figures further, access historical photographs and documents, and analyze how each woman’s story is portrayed — or simplified — in statue form.

While still underrepresented, these monuments offer examples of women being commemorated for who they were and what they did, not just what they symbolized.

In some cases, such as with Joan of Arc or colonial-era queens, monuments are contested due to their political or nationalistic associations, prompting discussions about whose stories are celebrated and why. These debates reveal how monuments are not neutral; they reflect power dynamics and can become focal points for rethinking public memory and identity.

Honouring Collective Female Memory

Monuments like the following serve a powerful role in acknowledging collective female experiences often left out of mainstream history. They highlight either ordinary women’s contribution or suffering — from wartime resilience and resistance to exploitation and injustice. Unlike individual statues, they offer a broader representation of women’s roles and agency, emphasizing shared memory and collective identity. They also challenge the traditional focus on male heroes by recognizing the significance of women’s experiences in shaping history.

Memorials of Comfort women (See Lesson plan in p.117 of Monument(al) Challenges Tool Kit)
“Moments Contained” statue in Rotterdam Railway station
“The woman of Pindos” (for women who helped in the Greek-Italian War 1940)
Monument to the women of WWII

Classroom Strategies: Using Monuments to Teach Gender Perspectives

Here are a few classroom ideas for incorporating public monuments into teaching gender equality:

Monument Mapping

Ask students to research statues in their own communities or countries. Who is depicted? What gender are they? What were their achievements? Use this to prompt discussions on historical visibility and historical significance.

Compare Abstract vs. Real Representations

Contrast symbolic female figures (e.g., Liberty, Justice) with actual women represented in statues. What messages do these representations convey about gender and power?

Historical Thinking with Sources

Use monuments as historical sources. Encourage students to ask:

Who commissioned the monument?
What is the historical context related to who/what is being represented?
What narrative does it promote?
Whose story is missing?

Debate or Panel: Who Deserves a Statue?

Have students research underrepresented women in history and make a case for why they deserve public commemoration.

Creative Task: Design a Monument

Let students design their own statue to honor a woman from history or a contemporary figure. Ask them to consider symbolism, setting, materials, and inscription.

Why It Matters

Monuments shape public memory. They reflect societal values — and omissions. By using the Monument(al) Challenges Toolkit and Europeana’s rich resources, teachers can empower students to ask critical questions about gender, power, and history. These tools not only support historical thinking and source evaluation but also encourage students to engage with equity and representation in the real world.

Whether through mapping, discussion, or creating their own proposals, students learn that history is not just about the past but also how we choose to remember.

Sources

EuroClio’s Monument(al) Challenges Toolkit (in English) https://euroclio.eu/download/monumental-challenges-toolkit_english/

Carving a place for women on statues, How many statues near you represent women? Published March 7, 2019 by Adrian Murphy (opens in new window) (Europeana Foundation) https://www.europeana.eu/en/stories/carving-a-place-for-women-on-statues

In May 2025, EuroClio and Europeana will be welcoming six cultural heritage educators to The Hague for a co-creation session as part of ‘Creating Lessons with Cultural Heritage’. The project seeks to dive into the untapped wealth of cultural heritage available through museums, archives and other cultural institutions to create ready-to-use materials for the classroom.