Johanna Westerdijk (1883-1961) was the first female professor in the Netherlands.

The well-known American feminist Angela Davis visited the Netherlands in 1995. She had been invited by IIAV in Amsterdam, to open an exhibition on black, migrant and refugee women.

On March 30th 1981, the day before the bill on abortion would be addressed by the Upper Chamber, women in the Netherlands went on strike. They laid down their paid and unpaid work that day in order to protest. The strike was against a number of issues, such as the deteriorating position of women, unemployment […]

Half a year before she would die, in 1998, Annemarie Grewel decided to cooperate in a large publicity stunt from the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Vrijwillige Euthanasie (Dutch association for voluntary euthanasia). In this picture from Erwin Olaf, Annemarie Grewel is escaping the doctor and the priest as Superwoman. In the text, the feminist and former […]

Rosa Manus (1881-1942) was one of the founders of the International Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV) in 1935. However, since 1994 it has become evident that Manus had already been busy with setting up such an archive from as early as 1930. In 1994, the IAV received microfilms from Moscow. These microfilms appeared to be part […]

In 1978, the photographer Bertien van Manen captured the lives of female immigrant workers.

This beautiful bronze relief of the head of Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925) was made by the famous artist and resistance hero Gerrit van der Veen in 1939. Drucker was one of the co-founders of the Vrouwen Vereeniging (Women’s society) in 1889, an organization that was the motor behind many initiatives and societies. One of the most important societies originating […]

The famous medical doctor Aletta Jacobs was not the only female Jacobs who paved the way for other women. Her older sister Charlotte (1847-1916) became a pharmacist. In 1877, she started to study pharmacy, initially in Groningen and later in Amsterdam, where she graduated in 1881. Detail regulations S.O.V.I.A (1913), Collection IAV-Atria A couple of years later, in […]