Younger Years

• Born in Sappemeer (Groningen), 9 February 1854 — died in Baarn, 10 August 1929, so she was 75 when she died.
• She was a Dutch doctor, feminist, and pacifist, founded the first birth control clinic in 1882, and the leader of the first wave of feminism, the first woman who got a PhD, and had a role in ensuring that women could vote.
• She was the 8th kid of 11 in a Jewish family. Her sister Charlotte was the second female to graduate from uni and a feminist, and her brother Eduard was the first Jewish mayor.
• However, she was not the first female to go to uni: that was Anna Maria van Schurman (5 November 1607). Anna Maria was admitted to Utrecht Universiteit in 1636 and excelled in forgein languages including French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Ethiopian, Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac (and obviously Dutch). However, she had to sit behind a curtain during lectures to not distract the male students.
  • Aletta was the first one to be admitted to an HBS, which was only for males, and the first known woman to successfully graduate with a university degree.
• From a young age, she wanted to go to higher education and wanted females to go there in general. She wanted to become her doctor because she wanted to be in her father's footsteps, and she found it unfair that women could not be a doctor.
• For women, their options were finishing school or nothing. She went to one and lasted for two weeks, where she was taught how to enter a room, curtsey properly, and replace Dutch words with their French equivalent because it was more refined, and how to behave around her husband. She found it quite iditotic and felt that she was getting dumber by the second.

Time at School

• In 1870 she gotten admitted to the Hogereburgerschool (HBS) as the first woman, and she went to the Rijks Hogere Burger School in Sappemeer, her birthplace.
  • HBS's don't exist anymore. The last diplomas were given in 1974. These were high schools with a lot of focus on science stuff, math, and modern languages. From 1917 onwards you could get admitted to universities from there. It took 3-6 years. Now we have havo, vwo, atheneum and gymnasium for that.
• A year later Aletta asked Thorbecke for permission to study at the university. He sends a note back addressing her father that she had been accepted for a trial period of one year at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and she started in 1871.
• When Thorbecke was on his death bed, he gave Aletta permission to do her doctor's exams in 1877 and 1878, making her the first female to get her Ph.D., and a medical degree. While doing her education, she did have bouts of illness. She wrote her doctorate on: Over lokalisatie van physiologische en pathologische verschijnselen in de groote hersenen (On the Localization of Physiological and Pathological Symptoms in the Cerebrum)
• After that, she went to London to work in Saint Mary's Dispensary. There she met other feminists and social reformers like Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first (or second) female medical practitioner in England, Millicent Fawcett, Annie Besant, Charles Bradlaugh, and George Drysdale.

Doctor

• Later she settled in Amsterdam in 1879 on the Herengracht. Here she gave free consultations to women and provides them with contraceptives, which was revolutionary.
• She held free clinics twice a week for poor women and campaigned to change the unhealthy working conditions of salesgirls.
  • The salesgirls whould have to stand for around 15 hours with short breaks. Aletta did not like this, and said that medically this was irresponsible. So she asked for benches so they could sit.
• She realised that getting pregnant repeatedly year after year was bad for the woman health and caused high rates of infant mortality.
• She also had prositutes, and studied STD's from them.
• Aletta found that a thing called diaphragms would help reduce pregnancies and alleviate struggles caused by overpopulation. And there was this other thing called pessary.
  • Other docters were critical of this, because it was their belief that women should accept the biological and natural processes of thier bodies: getting children and caring for them.
• In 1903 she gave up her medical practise to focus on woman suffrage.

Feminism

• Due to her, woman have the right to vote.
• She joined the Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1893, and in 1903, Aletta was the chairman of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Society for Women’s Suffrage), which was committed to making sure that women could vote.
  • They organize exhibitions, publish newspapers and pamphlets, and submit petitions. In 1916, the society organizes a demonstration for female suffrage which is attended by 18,000 men and women.
• She married Carel Victor Gerritsen in 1884 in a free marriage for practical reasons. In the law, it said that she had to make a promise of obedience to her spouse, which she hated. He did introduce her to a variety of people. They did have one child, but the babie died after only one day.
• In 1911-1912 she traveled around the world with Carrie Chapman Catt, an American feminist to help get females more rights worldwide. They went to South Africa, the Middle East, India, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, the Philippines, China and Japan.
• In 1915, the International Women’s Congress was canceled in Berlin due to the war, so she organized it herself in Den Haag. There were 1200 people in attendance from 12 countries.
• She went to America in September 1915 to meet its president, Woodrow Wilson. They talked about a potential League of Neutral Countries, which was a predecessor of the League of Nations (which as we know failed at its job).
• In 1919 woman got the right to vote, and Aletta founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1922 women went to vote for the first time.

Fun Facts

• Every two years the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen gives out the Aletta Jacobsprijs for women.