Second feminist wave buttons

collection highlight

At Atria, you will find hundreds of these kind of buttons. Besides banners and posters, during the so-called second feminist wave – in the 1970s and 1980s – especially buttons were made to make demands and wishes visible.

The texts on the buttons are generally short and powerful, but also often funny such as ‘more sun, less men‘ and ‘a warm lesbian front is crossing the Netherlands’.

Buttons in the collection

By: Arlette Strijland

Watercolours in a crate

Rosa Manus and Mia Boissevain took the initiative for the exhibition ‘Woman 1813-1913’ that took place at the country estate ‘Meerhuyzen’ in the current Amstelveen. For the organization of the exhibition, they established de Vereeniging Tentoonstelling ‘De Vrouw 1813-1913′ on the 22nd of May 1912. They had less than a year to organize the exhibition. […]

Dutch liberation skirts

The idea of the Dutch liberation skirt came from feminist and resistance fighter Mies Boissevain-van Lennep.

‘Several occupations, not open to Women, …’

This poster with seventeen professions in which women were not employed, or only very rarely, was shown on the Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid (National Exhibition of Women’s Labor) which was held in The Hague in 1898. Around the year 1900, women’s labor had a low standing in all social classes. Paid work was even taboo for […]

Watercolour of Rosa Manus

Among the thousands of items that were retrieved from Moscow in 2003, was this extraordinarily watercolour of Rosa Manus (1881-1942). Rosa Manus, ‘a modern woman of stature’, was one of the founders and the first president of the International Archives for the Women’s movement in 1935. At the bottom right ‘J.H. Sp. 27’. These intitials […]

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