Currently, there are no monuments to women on the National Mall. That’s about to change.
The 40 monuments, memorials and statues dotted across D.C.’s National Mall tell the story of America through depictions of some of its greatest trailblazers, history makers and fallen heroes. Missing from the narrative—and what the 36 million annual visitors don’t see—is the story of America’s women and the role they have played in shaping the nation. For five years, the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation and a group of lawmakers have been fighting for that to change. As of January 4th, their goal is becoming a reality, and America’s “Front Yard” will welcome its first monument dedicated to the pioneers of the American movement for women’s equality.
In the final hours of the 2024 congressional session, lawmakers voted on a number of high-profile bills, including expanding Social Security and funding the government to avert a looming shutdown. Among the flurry of bills brought to the Senate floor was H.R. 1318, the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Location Act, which would officially authorize the National Mall’s first and only monument dedicated to women’s history. Brought as a voice vote requiring unanimous consent, the measure would have failed with a single “nay.” None came, and the bill which cleared the House more than a year earlier was gaveled in and passed in the Senate.
“It was the most remarkable moment of my life, knowing that just one voice of dissent would have stopped women from being on the National Mall,” says Anna Laymon, executive director of the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation. “It came down to a razor’s edge. Women are going to be on the National Mall by a razor’s edge.”
Even with bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress and the foundation’s unique designation as the only organization where all six living First Ladies serve as honorary chairs beyond the Kennedy Center (with involvement assumed based on historical precedence), Laymon and her team still encountered pushback in the months leading up to the vote. She and her team sat in countless meetings with members of Congress and their staff, not all of which saw the need for a women’s monument.
“We got told that there’s no room for you on the National Mall, which has more than 1,000 acres of green space, ” says Laymon. “For this monument, we need one acre, and we heard, ‘Oh no, ladies, you’re asking for too much.'”
Ultimately, though, the Congressional members who raised concerns allowed the measure to pass without objection, and on the evening of January 4th, the bill came across President Biden’s desk. With just over two weeks left in his term, the president signed it into law.
That signature and the specific bill language that dictates the monument “shall” be built on the National Mall—not “may,” as Laymon notes one revision request tried for—means the project will officially move forward. The road ahead is a long one, however.
Even after surpassing the high bar of a literal act of Congress to move forward, the project must now clear a long list of approvals. The first step is working with the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission on site selection. Even with an ideal site in mind—Constitution Gardens, an idyllic 50-acre stretch flanked by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Reflecting Pool— the approval process could take up to a year. From there, another couple of years will go to a national call for designs, fundraising (roughly $80 million will be needed to build the monument), and finally, construction, with an estimated unveiling in 2032 or 2033.
The way to speed up the process would be to hand-select a design and designer, but Laymon says holding the open submission is non-negotiable.
“This is a project that’s all about inclusivity, and, for us, that means making sure that we live that principle out in every way at every phase of the project,” says Laymon, who points to the Vietnam Memorial’s open call as a reference point of success. “Maya Lin, a young woman in her twenties, a woman of color, would have never been asked to submit, but because of the open national call for designs, this idea that was groundbreaking and revolutionary moved forward, creating one of the most visited and revered monuments on the National Mall.”
An open call is also costlier than hand-selecting one designer, and this accounts for the $80 million fundraising estimate. The final tally will depend on the design, but monuments are not exactly known for being cheap. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, completed in 2020, cost $115 million to build. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, completed in 2011, cost $110 million. Whatever the final cost ends up being, Laymon wants supporters to know it’s going toward something significant—in meaning and scale.
“Our intention is not to build something small. If this is going to be the first and only monument on the National Mall dedicated to American women’s history—and with as hard as this has been to get done, it’s likely the only one in our lifetimes—it’s not going to be small. We’ve got big plans.”