Women on Albanian money – Elsa Zhulali
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The role of women in society can be discovered through many lenses. In her recent book “Women on Albanian money”, Elsa Zhulali provides to the reader a new approach in understanding the role women have had in Albanian society, by analyzing their portrayal on Albanian money. Through a fascinating journey that starts with the first effort to establish a national bank after the Albanian Independence, and ends in our days, the figures of the women presented on the Albanian coins and banknotes becomes much more than just figures, but a companion to the Albanian historical, social, economic and cultural changes in more than a century. Zhulali’s narration can serve both to a specialized reader on the matter, and to a new reader, that has just started to learn how much more there is behind each banknote or coin.
“The study of the featuring of women on the national currency reveals a lot about their role; fragility and force, misery and challenge, timidness and emancipation, yet little is presented about the triumph of the woman beyond the female allegory in the Albanian society,” writes Zhulali in her introduction. The book opens up with a brief overview of the figure of women in coins and banknotes, before presenting us with the first efforts to issue a national currency. While it is with the local banknotes that the allegorical reflection of the figure of women starts to get its proper space in the banknotes, the arrival of the national currency issued by the National Bank of Albania represents in a way also the arrival of the Albanian woman in the banknotes.
But as we will see during the six parts of the book, in a country marked by world wars, a 50-year dictatorship, and a long walk to democracy, the currency becomes an open history book, and Zhulali helps us understand its different chapters, by choosing as her heroine the Albanian woman. The fascist occupation of Albania, the communist dictatorship, the Albanian relations with Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and China, and the collapse of communism, all these different historical periods have left their mark in the currency circulating in Albania, and in her book Zhulali pays attention to each one of these periods.
Zhulali reserves for her readers also many surprises, such as the incorporation on her publication of the unsuccessful proposals to portray women on numismatic coins, or the representation of women on commemorative coins issued by the State Bank. “Women on Albanian money” fulfills not only its initial promise to deliver a well-elaborated book dedicated to the presence of the woman figure in Albanian currency, but offers also an absorbing text, that is an invitation of reflection upon the role women have had and should have in Albanian currency.
Elsa Zhulali graduated from the American College of Thessaloniki, Greece, with a degree in History and International Relations with a focus on Foreign Relations and Balkan Studies. She has worked at the research department of the Bank of Albania for 9 years and for the past 7 months at the European Integration Office. Elsa is the author of several articles of historical and educational character.
