The new designs for the pages of the UK passport, aimed at celebrating 500 years of UK arts and culture, has prompted accusations of sexism due to the decision to feature the achievements of seven men but only two women, The Guardian has reported. Mathematican Ada Lovelace and architect Eliasabeth Scott appear in portrait form along with their work, with page designs also including portraits and/or the work of John Harrison, inventor of the longitude clock, painter John Constable, architect Giles Gilbert Scott, George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket, and computing pioneer Charles Babbage, with whom Ada Lovelace worked and with whom she shares the page. William Shakespeare also appears in watermark on every page.
The quoted response by Mark Thomson, director general of the Passport Office, saying that they ‘tried to get a range of locations, a range of things around the country’, and adding, ‘whenever you do these things, there is always someone who wants their favourite rock band or their local icon or something else in the book’, falls a bit flat when, representing the visual arts, alongside John Constable, there is a page each for the work of Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, both contemporary male sculptors known for creating very large-scale public works.
The design will be used for the next five years.
4 November 2015
