The sex ratio or representation of women in Vienna’s public space is as low as in the field of art when compared with their actual share of the total population. Twenty-eight of seventy names of streets and places in the 7th district alone are field or geographical names, twenty-six names of men, and five names of professions. Only two names are names of women. Only one of the seven memorials in public space listed by the Antiquities and Monuments Office is dedicated to a woman, the actress Hansi Niese (1875–1934). There is not even one object created by a woman artist in the public space of the district of Neubau. While women represent 51.3 per cent of the total population, men represent 48.7 per cent, and women have informed life in the district in the past as artists, teachers, businesswomen, scientists, scholars, etc. Many of today’s achievements—such as school education for all classes and both sexes—are the result of women’s energetic, visionary, and unwavering commitment. Nevertheless, women tend to be forgotten in major historiographies, only rarely crop up in personal memories, and, as described, almost never appear symbolically in the form of monuments or street names in public space. They disappear invisibly.

The competition aimed at assessing and visualizing the share of women who made an active contribution to society. Marking the places where they lived and/or worked was to highlight both their achievements and their relationship with the district. The challenge lay in establishing memory traces and forge a connection to the present at the same time. Similar, visual interventions were to be created in three places in the district to convey the biographical data and the work of the women to be remembered. Leaving no doubt about their common denominator, the interventions should invite people to pause and define the space as a “space of women.”

Iris Andraschek’project Tell these people who I am emerged as winner of the competition.