Will the latest suffragette statue enable us to move on from the Mary Wollstonecraft naked Barbie?
On a sunny Tuesday morning in Epsoms market square, a 724kg bronze of suffragette Emily Davison is being lowered to the ground  but this statue is being put up, not pulled down. Her sculptor, Christine Charlesworth, looks on intently from the sidelines as the life-size piece, sitting on a granite bench emblazoned with the words No victory without sacrifice, is slowly winched into position. It will be another week before the plastic is unwrapped for Davisons official unveiling in the Surrey town where she died under the hooves of the Kings horse at the 1913 Derby. Charlesworth, 72, could be forgiven for nerves, with the toppled effigy of Edward Colston flat on his back in a Bristol Museums exhibition, and suggestions the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, should be turned to face the wall in collective shame.  If the whole of Epsom went up in arms and said they absolutely hated it, which in my heart of hearts I dont think they will, I would be a bit upset, she admits. With a dearth of public statues depicting significant women, there has been an attempt in recent years to redress the balance. A bronze of the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett now stands in Parliament Square following a lengthy campaign by the activist Caroline Criado Perez. Most recently, however, a statue memorialising the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft  featuring a naked bust meant to signify a kind of everywoman  polarised opinion when it was unveiled on Newington Green, north London, in November. The artist, Maggi Hambling, told BBC Radio 4s Today programme last week that she was surprised at the widespread objection to her piece, much of it from feminists, who were denying that they have bodies. Though she noted the tide of public opinion was turning, given it did serve its purpose in that so many more people now have asked themselves, Who the hell is Mary Wollstonecraft?