Scotland just put a woman on the new £5 note

Congratulations are in order to the nation of Scotland, which has just decided that novelist and poet Nan Shepherd will be featured on the next Bank of Scotland £5 note.

Last week we reported that women only feature on nine per cent of the world’s paper currency - and Queen Elizabeth II features on 74 of the 120 bills. Without her, women only feature on three per cent of the world's money.

Shepherd will bring the number of women to appear on paper money worldwide up to a grand total of 47 when the note comes into circulation by the end of 2016.

Shepherd is most famous for her non-fiction work “The Living Mountain” about hillwalking in the Cairngorms, as well as her career as a teacher of teachers.

The scientist Mary Somerville, the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society, is already set to appear on the Scottish £10 note, which will be available in 2017.

Scotland is outdoing the rest of the UK: on Friday the Bank of England announced that artist JMW Turner will be appearing on the £20 note after 2020, in the same year that the reformer Elizabeth Fry will be replaced by Sir Winston Churchill on the English £5.

More: These are the countries where women feature on banknotes

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