It's all about the Eleanors... or the Harriets, or the Susan B. Anthonys

And if not Alice Paul or Shirley Chisholm, then maybe one of these fine ladies: Author Betty Friedan, activist Sojourner Truth, environmentalist Rachel Carson, freedom fighter Rosa Parks, former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, Title IX backer Patsy Mink, Civil War nurse Clara Barton, Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, suffragist Susan B. Anthony, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, or founder of the women’s rights movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

It’s all part of Women on 20s (www.womenon20s.org), a movement to have a woman on the $20 bill by 2020, the 100th anniversary of when women were granted the right to vote via the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Frankly, I had to double-check — only 100 years? And that’s still five years away. It seems a bit mind-blowing to me now, even though I know that 1920 is when the amendment was enacted.

That means when my grandmothers were born around the turn of the last century, members of their gender could not vote. Luckily, by the time they came of voting age, it was a newly granted right.

I never asked either one of them what it was like when that happened, which I now regret. And I had the opportunity. As part of a college class on women’s history, I interviewed my maternal grandmother, who was born in Weston in 1909.

The interview was assigned by a professor who was such a fan of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she told us, that when she was around 9 months pregnant and it happened to be Stanton’s birthday, she did cartwheels in the hopes of inducing labor, to no avail, with the hope that her daughter would share that anniversary with Stanton.

And why not? Stanton authored the Declaration of Sentiments, signed by 68 women and 32 men, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, a document which is considered to have launched the women’s right movement.

It took more than 70 years after that for women to achieve the right to vote, however.

Hopefully, it will not take that long for a woman to get on the $20.

And why the $20, some might ask, other than the focus on the year 2020? Well, nobody really denies the historical importance of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin in United States history.

Plus, if we removed Franklin from the $100 bill, Puff Daddy would have to rewrite his song “It’s All About the Benjamins,” which, I guess, considering how many times he has changed his name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy to Diddy, actually might be doable. But some others might protest.

But when it comes to President Andrew Jackson, ironically, he opposed the central banking system.

Also, history does not look kindly upon his approval of the Indian Removal Act, which led to the Trail of Tears.

According to Wikipedia, Jackson replaced another former U.S. president, Grover Cleveland, on the $20 bill in 1928 just as the 100th anniversary of Jackson’s presidency was approaching. However, the online encyclopedia also states that it is not clear why the switch was made (Although Cleveland now can be found on the $1,000 bill. Which might have been a consolation prize. “Hey, you get to be on a really high denomination. But no one will ever see it.”)

One thing is clear — it’s time for a woman to be on U.S. currency. And the Susan B. Anthony dollar, issued between 1979 to 1981, does not count. People got those confused with quarters anyway.

Changing currency apparently does not take a congressional act, just an order by the Secretary of the Treasury, according to the Women on 20s website, which is a fountain of how-to information, as well as trivia, including the fact that the highest denomination is the $100,000 bill and bears the likeness of President Woodrow Wilson.

And the $10,000 bill features Salmon Chase, who served as Treasury Secretary under Lincoln and as a chief justice of the Supreme Court.

While those are some awesome credentials, I never heard of Chase. But I have heard of every woman on the list compiled by the Women on 20s group.

The website allows anyone to vote for three candidates. The top three vote getters, as well as Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller, will advance to a final round of voting.

Of course, the votes will not mean anything unless someone in power decides to make the change and, even then, another woman could be selected for the honor.

But in the meantime, the website will get people talking and thinking about the contributions these women made to our country and how great it would be to honor them in a way we can think about on a daily basis.