Banner
Atria has various beautiful banners carried by women during women’s suffrage demonstrations.
This particular banner from the Alkmaar section is the largest in the collection. It was not self-evident that banners were carried. Large groups of women felt hesitant to speak in public or to take to the streets to propagandize the good cause, let alone joining a demonstration visibly!
In 1903, Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925) proposed the production of an own banner for the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (organization for women’s suffrage). This provoked a true campaign. Each annual meeting, Drucker insisted on the acquisition of an own banner. She published critical reports of these meetings in the magazine ‘Evolutie’ (Evolution): adjourned in 1903, voted down in 1904, and thereupon year after year of keeping it from the agenda as if this piece of cloth was ‘a poisonous snake’.
Source: Image archive IAV
