The IAV Collection (1935) is one of the oldest collections on women and gender worldwide. 

In 1935, Rosa Manus (1881-1942), Johanna Naber (1859-1941) and Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot (1897-1989) founded the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV). They did this in order to collect and preserve the heritage of women, and to stimulate academic research on the position of women. 

By 1935, the so-called first feminist wave was over, and many women who had been active in the women’s movement around 1900 were old or deceased. The three founders of the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV) felt that the cultural heritage of women and the history of the women’s movement should be preserved. In addition, young feminists in the 1930s needed well-documented knowledge of the past. For example, to be able to defend themselves against the government, which since the 1920s regularly tried to ban women from paid work. 

Aletta Jacobs 

The collection’s beginnings included 300 books by Rosa Manus, one of the founders of the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV). A year later, she donated the archive of Aletta Jacobs (1854-1929), the first female doctor in the Netherlands and famous fighter for women’s suffrage.
More about Aletta Jacobs

World War II: stolen collections 

In July 1940, the IAV’s two premises were emptied by the Germans. After the war, only 10% of the collection was recovered. When the archive reopened in 1947, the bookshelves were almost empty. The old IAV archives later appeared to have had a long journey of wandering. In 1992, they were found in Moscow and in 2003, after long negotiations, they finally returned to Amsterdam.
More about the stolen archives

The second feminist wave 

During the years of the so-called second feminist wave (1965 – mid-1980s), the IAV collected a wealth of material. This resulted, among other things, in the impressive collection of posters, which was digitised in 2003 and can now be viewed online.
Poster collection

Joke Smit Prize 

In 2000, the International Information Centre and Archive for the Women’s Movement received the Joke Smit Prize, the government’s biennial award for providing a fundamental contribution to improving the position of women. 

Atria 

Atria was founded in 2012, from a merger between Aletta (as the International Information Centre and Archive for the Women’s Movements was now called) and E-Quality, knowledge centre for emancipation, family and diversity.