Only one in 10 public statues in Denmark are of women, a figure the country's culture minister has described as "completely insane" and vowed to make more of.
The culture ministry told AFP that a committee would be tasked with drawing up a list of important but neglected women in Danish history and making recommendations for new statues in their honour.
"Of the 321 statues and busts in urban areas, only 31 represent women, and Copenhagen has more statues of mythical creatures than of women. This is completely insane," Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said in a statement.
"Is this really the image that the next generation should grow up in?" he asked.
In September 2022, a short outdoor exhibition in downtown Copenhagen put on display 50 empty pedestals to illustrate the lack of women represented in the public space.
The organisers also named women they felt should be honoured, including the writer Karen Blixen (1885-1962), the artist Lili Elbe (1882-1931), one of the country's first transgender women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and the 16th-century explorer. Sophie Brahe.
The culture ministry said it does not yet have recommendations on which women deserve statues, nor how many should be erected. / BGNES
