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Protests after Britain's new tamper-proof passport 'airbrushes women out of history'

Xinhua, November 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

A leading charity set up to champion equal rights for females Tuesday accused the British government of airbrushing women out of history.

Britain's new tamper-proof passport with illustrations celebrating 500 years of creativity will be brought into use next month.

After the new design that featured seven men and two females from history was unveiled at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, politicians and feminine groups immediately rounded on the government, criticizing the new design for lacking objectiveness.

Architect Elisabeth Scott and mathematician Ada Lovelace are the only women to feature in the design.

Labour opposition party's shadow employment secretary Emily Thornberry described the designs as exasperating, adding: "We exist."

The respected Fawcett Society, which fights for female equality, said the government had effectively airbrushed women out of history.

The new 34-page passport, themed, "Creative United Kingdom," uses a portrait of William Shakespeare as a security watermark on each page.

Shakespeare is featured along with six other men, artists John Constable, Anish Kapoor and Sir Antony Gormley, architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, computer pioneer Charles Babbage and John Harrison who invented the marine clock.

Sam Smethers, CEO of the Fawcett Society, said: "Instead of being celebrated and remembered, great British women are being airbrushed out of history. They could have included the first feminist and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Virginia Woolf, Bridget Riley -- the list is endless."

"This is completely unacceptable and the dismissive response of the Passport Office is revealing in itself. It appears that they have a problem with institutional sexism," Smethers said.

Mark Thomson, director general of the Passport Office, defended the design of the new passport, saying: "We like to feel we've got a good representative view celebrating some real icons of the UK -- Shakespeare, Constable and of course Elisabeth Scott herself."

Home Office Minister for Immigration, James Brokenshire, said: "The UK passport has an international reputation as a trusted and secure travel document, and we work tirelessly to stay one step ahead of the criminals who attempt to abuse the UK's immigration laws."

He said the new passport design was the most secure the UK has ever issued, thanks to advanced printing technology with UV and infrared light, inks and watermarks.

Work on the new design started more than two years ago as part of a 10 year contract worth more than 600 million U.S. dollars. Endi