A hundred years ago, life was no fun for women, and certainly not for working-class women in the city:little schooling and long days of work for next to nothing; financial and sexual exploitation in the factories. The British film Suffragette shows in a striking and moving way the wretched position of these women and their struggle for betterment. How was the situation in the Netherlands?
The movie Suffragette, which is now in cinemas, is set in pre-World War I England (1914-1918). Suffragettes are women who fought for women's suffrage in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Politicians of this era, white men from the upper classes, have been talking for decades about more rights for the 'weaker sex', but they do not change laws. For the first time in Western history, women are therefore revolting and even using violence to turn the tide. With the right to vote for women, they hope to improve their lives and that of their daughters. In the Netherlands, too, women are fighting for the right to vote and more. The most radical feminist of the first hour is Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925).
Wilhelmina Drucker is a different story. She was born in 1847, the illegitimate child of a seamstress and a wealthy banker, Louis Drucker. Wilhelmina and her sister are not recognized by their father. When Louis Drucker later marries, his new children receive all rights to the inheritance. In 1884 the man dies and Wilhelmina still inherits a small amount. But because it is not nearly the same as the inheritance of the legally recognized children from her father's marriage, Wilhelmina protests. Among other things, she publishes a novel, George David, a charge against the disenfranchisement of unrecognized children.
Hypocritical Laws
Around the same time, Drucker comes into contact with socialists and freethinkers. She attends all kinds of meetings, for example of the Social Democratic Bond (SDB), the association for freethinkers De Dageraad and the Dutch Association for General Electoral and Voting Rights. She expresses her opinion on socialist issues in various magazines for like-minded people.
The socialists just don't go far enough for her. They want protection for working-class women in the workplace, while Drucker wants equal rights for men and women. That means equal pay for equal work, and no dismissal in the event of a marriage. The latter does not apply to factory women, because a working-class family cannot survive on the wages of only the man. Middle-class women in occupations such as shop assistants, teachers or in government service automatically lose their jobs upon marriage. In addition, socialists are not fighting for universal suffrage for everyone, but for men and that is also against Drucker's sore leg. And what these socialists are not concerned with at all is unequal sexual morality.
Drucker knows from experience how a family can fall into poverty if the father does not recognize the illegitimate children. Not only the mother, but also the children have no rights. It is also prohibited by law to conduct research into the biological father. Drucker strongly opposes this ban and also wants all children, recognized or not, to have the same rights. In addition, she sees marriage in itself as a sham institution. Under the guise of protecting the weaker sex, the woman has no control over her own body, children and resources. The husband is allowed to spend her money, without her being able to do anything about it. He can mistreat her in any way, without being punished.
Man and woman are not equal before the law as well as for the church during this period. The church has preached for centuries that original sin is the fault of the woman and that she is inferior to the man. The women behave accordingly. But not Drucker. To her, this inequality equals slavery. A new sound, especially for a woman, is her idea of sexual freedom here. Women are only allowed to fill their husbands' stomachs and bear children. What the (sexual) desires of the woman herself are is absolutely not important, something that Wilhelmina strongly opposes:'Passion drives both men and women to procreation, that's how nature is.'
Fallen women
Although her angle is new, Drucker is not alone in protesting the double sexual morality. From the mid-nineteenth century, charitable associations arose in which bourgeois women moved into poor neighborhoods to offer assistance. Prostitution is rampant and not because it is such a pleasant profession. Unequal rights in the labor market quickly make prostitution the last resort for poor girls to earn money.
Many country girls come to the city to work as maids. They are paid little and are soon replaced by cheaper teenagers after their eighteenth birthday. Without replacement work there is often no other way out. Although these "fallen women" are looked down upon, there are few moral objections for men to go to the whores, and the deadly syphilis is a common disease in the nineteenth century. The fact that these decent bourgeois men infect their good wives at home is provoking more and more resistance.
From about 1850, industrialization resulted in increasingly crowded slums where people lived in appalling conditions. Helpful civic wives from charitable organizations find in the back alleys of the working-class neighborhoods a world they never knew existed:drafty hovels full of vermin; no money for decent food; small children, left without a babysitter because the parents are all at work. After 1870, organized charity increased, as did the call for social change. Only then will politicians start interfering with the social issue.
Capitalist filth
According to Wilhelmina Drucker, however, the solution to these problems is not the prohibition of prostitution, but equality between men and women. Equality already starts with upbringing – in her eyes girls are kept stupid and can only wait chastely for their groom – and equality also applies to the labor market. Economic independence means freedom. Drucker herself gains her freedom through her inheritance. She settles with her half-brother and receives a fortune that will make her independent for the rest of her life. With this money Drucker is committed to the female cause. She founded the non-party Free Women's Association and the weekly magazine for women:Evolution. With this she bids farewell to the socialists who consider the women's cause less important than men's rights. Until the end of her life, Drucker writes Evolution largely self-full.
Wilhelmina Drucker exposes countless social abuses in the Evolution. In 1893, for example, she describes that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is not a criminal offense to kiss women against their will in public. At that time, sexuality was written very chastely – the word itself was barely mentioned – and it was not just about kissing. Drucker's response is furious:"When some capitalist filth deems it fit to taint the lips of our women or girls with its syphilistic breath, then such violent assault is not guilty in our godly homeland."
The struggle of Wilhelmina Drucker and like-minded people has entered the history books as the first wave of feminism. Because of their combativeness and the stage that Drucker managed to create to propagate their ideas, a decisive start has been made with equal rights for men and women. In 1919, for example, women were given active voting rights. Even after her death in 1925, Drucker remains an inspiration to many. The Dolle Mina's from the seventies, women who, among other things, fought for 'boss in their own belly', even name themselves after her. Even today, a hundred years later, many of the topics Drucker touched on are still relevant. Much has already been achieved, but there is still no 100 percent equality between men and women in the West. Let alone in other parts of the world. A movie like Suffragette delicately reminds you that freedom and equality cannot be taken for granted, but something to fight for.