An organization committed to gender equality is demanding that President Obama put a woman on the $20 bill, which currently features Andrew Jackson.

Wilma Mankiller, the first elected female chief of the Cherokee nation; civil rights leader Rosa Parks; former first lady and human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt and African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman have made it to the final shortlist of the Women On 20s campaign. Voting for the final candidate is open to the public on womenon20s.org/vote2.

We support putting a female historical figure who contributed to our nation on the $20 bill. Civil rights legend Rosa Parks would be our preferred choice.

Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a White man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on Dec. 1, 1955 helped awaken the conscience of our nation and demonstrated the evil of racial segregation. It was one of the catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement and showed that a simple act of defiance can make a historic difference. Parks is towering proof that change starts with the individual.

The United States is a nation with a history of oppression and parallel progress of rights and freedoms. The country was founded on enlightened egalitarian ideas, yet most of its founders owned slaves. Even after the Civil War, African Americans in the southern states suffered from Jim Crow laws and legal discrimination for the next 100 years. The Black community continues to be victimized by police brutality, biased legal systems and economic policies that limit the social mobility of African Americans. 

The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920. But for African American women, southern state restrictions on voting remained until the Civil Rights Movement. Black men gained the right to vote with the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, but literacy exams and poll taxes— aimed to keep African Americans from the ballot box— persisted until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Parks, who spent the last 40 years of her life in Detroit, embodies the continuous struggle of women and minorities. 

As Arab Americans, we look at Parks as an icon and a role model. We, too, are being told to “sit in the back of the bus”, that we don’t belong, that we should “go home.” The Civil Rights Movement that Parks fueled with her resilience is a blueprint for the struggle for racial equality. We can learn to organize and mobilize to reform the status quo from her example.

No matter who receives the most votes in the Women On 20’s campaign, the president should yield to the initiative’s demands. Women are half of society. The federal government should recognize their sacrifice for this nation.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has near total power over our currency. The president said last July that it would be a “pretty good idea” to have more women on our money. With the exception of Martha Washington on the 1886 and 1891 $1 silver certificates (and the reverse of the 1896 $1 silver certificate) and Pocahontas as part of a vignette on the 1869-1880 $10 bill (opposite a photo of Daniel Webster), actual women have never appeared on U.S. paper money. Instead, most depictions of women have been either fictional or mythical characters like “Lady Liberty.”

True, Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea have been on dollar coins from 1979-1981 and 1999- present, respectively (and Helen Keller is on the reverse of the 2003 Alabama state quarter). However, those dollar coins are not in wide circulation— in large part because the dollar bill still exists— and the Anthony dollar being similar in size to the quarter made it unpopular. Women deserve to be depicted on something other than the reverse of a limited edition quarter or the obverse of unpopular dollar coins; women should be featured on circulating paper currency.

Of course, when it comes to gender equality, placing the portrait of a woman of historical significance on banknotes would not be enough. Women earn 77 cents for each dollar that men make. Equal pay for equal work should be mandatory by law.