This Oral History project interviews five women who have left their mark on the 40-year history of women’s shelters in the Netherlands.

The role of the Blijf-van-m’n-Lijf shelters and the women who founded the first shelter and who have been directors of the growing organisation at decisive moments, or who have otherwise had a great influence on the development of the women’s shelter. Their personal and professional story complements the sources in the literature and archive on women’s shelters (i.e. Blijf-van-m’n-Lijf).

The interviews also focus on the significance of the self-help principle as initially developed in Blijf-van-mijn-Lijf.

ATRIA – blijf van m’n lijf

Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is mostly associated with boys. Less known is how girls fared. The Women’s Platform for Church Child Abuse (VPKK) presented the life stories project Nobody Will Believe You on Friday, 9 September 2016, to give a voice to these women.

No one will believe you

The project consists of six video interviews with women who have experienced sexual abuse and mistreatment in the Catholic Church.

Dolle Mina was a left-wing, radical feminist action group. Despite the formal rights women had, there was still a lot of injustice and disadvantage. Through playful actions, they wanted to improve women’s rights. Their sources of inspiration were campaigning women in the US and the Maagdenhuis occupation in Amsterdam. The action group took its name from the nickname of women’s campaigner Wilhelmina Drucker. This combative feminist of the first hour was nicknamed ‘Iron Mina’. Wilhelmina Drucker pursued the same goals as the action group a century earlier.

ATRIA -> Dolle Mina

THERE WERE ONCE two women’s peace unions, the Algemeene Nederlandsche Vrouwen Vredebond and the Internationale Vrouwenbond voor Vrede en Vrijheid. Both had been founded at the beginning of World War I with an appeal to something like women’s special responsibility for a better world.
The ANW was of the so-called apolitical ‘improve the world start with yourself’ type. Its members went on home visits like salvation soldiers to propagate peace from person to person.
The IVW, the Dutch branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, was self-confident, professional and politically dyed-in-the-wool in the feminist suffrage struggle. Like self-appointed mediators, its leaders, including Aletta Jacobs, went round heads of state and prime ministers to organise peace.

Political scientist Marijke Mossink explains what moved both unions in her dissertation De levenbrengsters – Over vrouwen, vrede, feminisme en politiek in Nederland 1914-1940. On 10 May 1940, they had come within a hair’s breadth of merging, after years of disputes over the forms of action and organisation of their female mission.

De levenbrengsters
over vrouwen, vrede, feminisme en politiek in Nederland 1914-1940

Marijke Mossink

Stichting beheer IISG, 1995 – 252 pages

Proefschrift van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculteit Politieke en Sociaal-Culturele Wetenschappen. Door middel van een vergelijkend onderzoek naar de Algemeene Nederlandsche Vrouwen Vredebond en de Internationale Vrouwenbond voor Vrede en Vrijheid is nagegaan hoe het mogelijk was dat deze twee vrouwenvredesorganisaties naast elkaar bestonden, en waarom het zo moeilijk was om tot een fusie te komen. Centraal staat de betekenis die in beide organisaties aan de begrippen ‘vrouwen’, ‘vrede’ en ‘organisatie’ werd toegekend.

Oral History interviews with eight women who played important roles in the Red Women and women’s training centre De Born

For brief descriptions of the interviewees see the website van Artria

Oral history interviews with feminists who pioneered women’s mental and physical health care.

For brief descriptions of the interviewees, see the website van Artria

The aim of the project was twofold:

• To generate source material on feminism of the so-called ‘second feminist wave’ by interviewing protagonists of this movement with special attention to aspects that remain underexposed in written sources.
• To introduce the general public to (the ideas of) the second feminist wave by means of interactive web modules using, among other things, interview fragments.

Result:

• 30 interviews (15 protagonists, 2 interviews each): digital files with transcription and metadata
• Video interviews with 8 protagonists, from which several passages were cut for the didactic website: GENDERHISTORY.BE

The second feminist wave is the name of a period of feminist activism in the late 1960s and 1970s.  It was part of a broader movement of social protest, like the student protest of May ’68. This website introduces you to the feminist movement in Flanders. What did the feminists want ‘from the second wave’? And how do they look back on that period today?

The website gendergeschiedenis.be is meant as an introduction to the history of the women’s movement.

In 2012-2013 the Archive Centre for Women’s History (AVG) worked on the project about the history of the second wave of feminism in Belgium.

This article was published about the course of the project and the learning process the AVG went through regarding digital sustainability.  

Moving Lesbians contains excerpts from the life stories of five lesbians who contributed greatly to the visibility and emancipation of lesbians in the Netherlands from the 1960s onwards. The pieces come from 5 long video interviews, which are included in Atria’s oral history collection Moving Women’s Interviews.

The women portrayed are:

• Gon Buurman (photographer)
• Evelien Eshuis (politician, board member Schorerstichting)
• Anja van Kooten Niekerk (first female director COC Nederland)
• Ligya Wachter (co-founder of Black Orchid and Mil Colores)
• Ditte Wessels (artist and participant of Lesbian ConneXions)

The portraits and life stories of the individual women also tell a story about crucial social changes for lesbian women. The film was on continuous display at Atria and the Amsterdam Museum during EuroPride (2016). The portraits can also be viewed on the playlist Moving Lesbians  op Atria’s YouTube kanaal.

The ‘Diversity’ project to capture life stories of women with a migrant background who make an important contribution to the black. migrant and refugee women’s (movements).