Aletta
Jacobs, the eighth
of twelve children, was born in the Netherlands
in 1854. Her father was a doctor and she decided at an early age she
wanted to be a member of the same profession. At this time boys and
girls received different forms of secondary education. Whereas girls
studied languages, art, music and handicrafts to prepare them for
life as a wife and mother, a boy's education included mathematics,
history, Greek, and Latin. Aletta's father managed to persuade the
local boys' high school to allow his daughter to attend these classes.
After leaving high school,
Jacobs went to live with one of her brothers who worked as a pharmacist.
He taught her the trade and she eventually passed the relevant pharmacist
exam. In 1872 she received special permission from the government
to enter the University of Gröningen.
Jacobs passed her university
exams in Mathematics and Physics and in 1876 entered the medical school
in Amsterdam. Jacobs later wrote that during her studies she "encountered
professors who openly opposed the idea of women doctors". However,
she also received the strong support from other teachers and she successfully
obtained her medical degree on April 2, 1878.
During the summer of 1878
Jacobs visited London where she met other
feminists. This included Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson who had qualified as a doctor in 1865. On her return
to the Netherlands she became involved in several campaigns to improve
the conditions of working class women.
Jacobs also became involved
in providing women with birth-control. In
her autobiography Jacobs wrote: "For social, moral, and medical
reasons, women from different social classes had often asked me for
some form of contraception. I had always had to fend off these requests
without providing adequate explanation or advice. Eventually I sent
letters to a number of women whose need was greatest. I told them
that I believed I had found a means to help them, but before I could
fully recommend it, they would have to agree to regular examinations
during the first months of its use. Some of these women eventually
agreed to the experiment, and the results were such that, some months
later, I was able to announce that I could provide a safe and effective
contraceptive."
Despite opposition from
religious and political leaders, Jacobs started a national campaign
to make contraception widely available in the Netherlands. Her birth-control
clinic in Amsterdam open over 30 years before those in the United
States and Britain. Her success inspired the activities of other birth-control
advocates and Margaret Sanger and Marie
Stopes both traveled to the Netherlands to find out more about
the work of Jacobs.
Jacobs
was also inspired by the work of feminists in other countries. For
example, she took a keen interest in the activities of Josephine
Butler who had campaigned
against the Contagious Diseases Act
in Britain. These acts had been introduced in the 1860s in an attempt
to reduce venereal disease in the armed forces. Butler objected in
principal to laws that only applied to women. Under the terms of these
acts, the police could arrest women they believed were prostitutes
and could then insist that they had a medical examination. Butler
had considerable sympathy for the plight of prostitutes who she believed
had been forced into this work by low earnings and unemployment. Jacobs
shared Butler's concerned and campaigned against organized prostitution
(white
slave traffic).
In 1883 Jacobs attempted
unsuccessfully to register to vote. This was the beginning of her
campaign for universal suffrage. This generated a great deal of support
after the Dutch Parliament, added the word "male" to the
list of voting qualifications in 1887.
In 1893 Jacobs helped establish
the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Woman Suffrage Alliance). Jacobs
became head of the Amsterdam section and in 1903 she was elected president
of the organization. Jacobs worked closely with other organizations
such as the National Woman Suffrage Association
and the National Union of Suffrage Societies
and in 1904 was a founder member of the International Woman Suffrage
Alliance (IWSA). This included feminists from the United States, Britain,
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Germany.
Jacobs became one of the
most important international figures in the fight for universal suffrage.
In 1911 she joined Carrie Chapman Catt in
a world fact-finding tour. This included visits to South Africa, Syria,
Egypt, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, Burma, Singapore, the Dutch East
Indies, the Philippines, China, and Japan.
On
the outbreak of the First World War a group
of women pacifists in the United
States began talking about the need to form an organization to
help bring it to an end. On the 10th January, 1915, over 3,000 women
attended a meeting in the ballroom of the New Willard Hotel in Washington
and formed the Woman's Peace Party. Jane
Addams was elected president and other women involved in the organization
included Mary McDowell, Florence
Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Anna
Howard Shaw, Belle La Follette,
Fanny Garrison Villard, Mary
Heaton Vorse, Emily Balch, Jeanette
Rankin, Lillian Wald, Edith
Abbott, Grace Abbott, Crystal
Eastman, Carrie Chapman Catt, Emily
Bach, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
In April 1915, Jacobs invited members of the Woman's
Peace Party to an International Congress of Women in the
Hague. Jane Addams was asked to chair
the meeting and Mary Heaton Vorse, Alice
Hamilton, Grace Abbott, Julia
Lathrop, Leonora O'Reilly, Sophonisba
Breckinridge and Emily Bach went as
delegates from the United States. Others who went to the Hague included
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Emily
Hobhouse, (England); Chrystal Macmillan
(Scotland) and Rosika Schwimmer (Hungary).
Afterwards, Jacobs, Addams, Macmillan, Schwimmer and Balch went to
London, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Rome, Berne and Paris to speak with
members of the various governments in Europe.
Throughout
this period Jacobs continued to campaign for universal suffrage. The
vote was granted to women in Finland (1906), Norway (1907), Denmark
(1915), Russia (1917), Germany (1918), Britain (1918), Poland (1918),
Austria (1918), Czechoslovakia (1918) and Hungary (1918). Like the
women of Luxemburg, Belgium and Sweden, the Netherlands had to wait
until 1919 before obtaining the vote.
Aletta
Jacobs died in 1929.
(1)
Aletta Jacobs, Memoirs: My Life as an International leader in Health,
Suffrage, and Peace
(1913)
When
I was a student, and particularly when I worked at Amsterdam Hospital,
I was haunted by the suffering caused by frequent pregnancies, which,
for various reasons, can have a disastrous effect on a woman's life.
In my long conversations
with a variety of women in the delivery room, they explained to me
that they found it impossible to prevent pregnancy when sexual abstinence
was the only method available. Women who produced sickly babies or
stillbirths, for whom birth meant yet another brush with death, kept
on returning to the delivery room. Families that were already large
enough considering the mother's physical condition and the parents'
circumstances, simply continued to expand. I spent hours wrestling
with this problem without any solution in sight. Sometimes I discussed
the issue with my fellow students. "Yes," they would coolly
reply, "that's what is called a woman's destiny" or "Thank
God, there's no way of preventing pregnancy. If there were, then the
whole world would soon collapse through underpopulation."
The availability of contraception
would prevent immeasurable suffering. I had learned that much from
the pregnant women I had met in Amsterdam Hospital and from all the
newborn babies whose births were greeted by anything but joy and whose
very existence was a burden both to their families and to society
in general. There remained only the question of which contraceptives
were effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy. I felt unable to
come up with any definitive answer. Doubting that the existing means
were reliable or even suitable for use, I was uncertain as to whether
they could damage users' health. In the end, I was forced to admit
that I had reached an impasse. My contact was with groups that included
the book's author and with others who described themselves as Neo-Malthusians
because they followed Malthus's ideas yet chose to employ their own
means to combat this social ill. Although they had provided me with
much theoretical knowledge, I had no way of transforming theory into
practice...
During my search for a
remedy for this state of affairs, I chanced upon an article in early
1882 in a German medical journal that had been written by Dr. Mensinga
from Flensburg. He recommended the use of a pessary for the kinds
of cases I was dealing with. This purely scientific article made such
an impression on me that I immediately wrote to its author. A lengthy
exchange of letters followed, in which Dr. Mensinga informed me fully
about the way in which pessaries should be used. He also sent me a
number of specimens. Although Dr. Mensinga had assured me that they
were effective and in no way jeopardized users' health, I decided
that I had to have them tested before I could provide any personal
recommendation.
For social, moral, and
medical reasons, women from different social classes had often asked
me for some form of contraception. I had always had to fend off these
requests without providing adequate explanation or advice. Eventually
I sent letters to a number of women whose need was greatest. I told
them that I believed I had found a means to help them, but before
I could fully recommend it, they would have to agree to regular examinations
during the first months of its use. Some of these women eventually
agreed to the experiment, and the results were such that, some months
later, I was able to announce that I could provide a safe and effective
contraceptive.
Although I deemed it unnecessary
to advertise my wares, I felt duty-bound to announce that I was now
able to prescribe contraception for those women wishing to avoid pregnancy
on social, moral, or medical grounds.
(2)
Aletta Jacobs, Memoirs: My Life as an International leader in Health,
Suffrage, and Peace
(1913)
Catholic
missionaries... not only teach their converts to take on our (oh so
civilized) morals and customs, but also to adopt European clothes.
Just imagine, that here (Kenya), in this savage, hot climate right
near the Equator, where every true European envies the efficient nakedness
of our brown brothers and would love to dress alike (if only his civilization
had not taught him that this is immoral), that here, these simple
people have been instructed to cover their beautiful brown backs and
to go to church in a hat and boots, in white shirts and blouses. This
is the height of stupidity, narrow-mindedness and blindness concerning
their own habits and customs!
(3)
Jane Addams, speech at Carnegie Hall (9th
July, 1915)
The first thing which was striking is this, that the same causes and
reasons for the war were heard everywhere. Each warring nation solemnly
assured you it is fighting under the impulse of self-defense.
Another thing which we found very striking was that in practically
all of the foreign offices the men said that a nation at war cannot
make negotiations and that a nation at war cannot even express willingness
to receive negotiations, for if it does either, the enemy will at
once construe it as a symptom of weakness.
Generally speaking, we heard everywhere that this war was an old man's
war; that the young men who were dying, the young men who were doing
the fighting, were not the men who wanted the war, and were not the
men who believed in the war; that someone in church and state, somewhere
in the high places of society, the elderly people, the middle-aged
people, had established themselves and had convinced themselves that
this was a righteous war, that this war must be fought out, and the
young men must do the fighting.
(4)
Mary
Heaton Vorse,
A Footnote to Folly (1935)
The women’s
rising tide of protest against the war came to a point on February
12, 1915. On that date a great peace meeting was held in Washington
by the women of America. On the same date, in Holland, an International
Congress of Women, to be held in Amsterdam, was called by Dr. Aletta
Jacobs, a famous Dutch suffragist.
The American
delegation, the largest which attended the Congress, was headed by
Jane Addams. It included such people as Grace Abbott, Julia Lathrop,
Sophonisba Breckinridge, Dr. Alice Grace Hamilton, Miss Kittredge,
Mrs. W. I. Thomas, who, with her husband, was so bitterly persecuted
during the war for her pacifism, Fannie Fern Andrews, Mary Chamberlain,
from the Survey, and Marian Cothren. At my table were Mary
Chamberlain and the Pethwick Lawrences.
Besides
many of the most forward - looking women of America, the group also
included cranks, women with nostrums for ending war, and women who
had come for the ride. New Thought cranks with Christian Science smiles
and blue ribbons in their hair, hard - working Hull House women, little
half-baked enthusiasts, elderly war horses of peace, riding furious
hobbies.
As a background
was Jane Addams, unassertive, contemplative and sensitive. All the
way over we discussed our program. All the way over, that great woman,
Miss Addams, listened with as much patience to the suggestions of
the worst crank among us as she did to such trained minds as Miss
Breckinridge. I have never known anyone who had a greater intellectual
hospitality or courtesy. When I spoke of this to her one day, she
said quietly, “I have never met anyone from whom I could not
learn.” We were held up for four days in the English Channel,
off Dover, and arrived late, just in time for the opening meeting
on the 27th of April.
The women
who attended this Congress were for the most part well-to-do women
of the middle class. It was an everyday audience, plain people, just
folks, the kind you see walking out to church any Sunday morning.
Labor was unrepresented except for Leonora O’Reilly, of the Woman’s
Trade Union League, and Annie Molloy, the president of the Telephone
Operators Union. It was an audience composed of women full of inhibitions,
not of a radical habit of thought, unaccustomed for the most part
to self-expression, women who had walked decorously all their days,
hedged in by the “thou shalt nots” of middle-class life.
This meeting of these women seemed all the more remarkable on that
account, much more significant than the famous Ford Peace Ship.
The Congress
was held in a great hall, called the “Dierentuin,” in the
Zoological Gardens. In front of the gardens on a wide field, soldiers
were perpetually drilling. One saw them move off more like automata
than men. One saw them go through various maneuvers. They were perpetually
there, a living example of the awful madness of war. A Dutchwoman
said to me, as we walked past them: “It is only since the war
that I have realized that they do this to learn how to kill other
men and to offer themselves to be killed. My head has always known
this, but my heart only since the war!”
Counting
visitors, there were between 1,200 and 1,500 in the audience. There
were delegates from twelve countries. But no delegates from France,
Serbia or Russia. Not even the Socialist women would send a delegate
while the enemy was on French soil.
On the
proscenium sat some of the most famous women in Europe, almost all
internationally known; Miss Jane Addams and Miss Fannie Fern Andrews,
from America; Dr. Aletta Jacobs and Dr. Boissevain, from Holland;
Miss MacMillan and Miss Courtenay, form Great Britain. One wonders
where those old feminists are now, Dr. Augsburg and Fraulein von Heymann
of Germany, Frau Kruthgar or Frau Hofrath von Lecher of Austria. What
has become of those able fighters of twenty years ago from Central
Europe?
Of the
two hundred English who had planned to come, only two had been allowed
visas. And only one Italian delegate had got through, but there were
delegates from Poland, from South Africa and from Canada.
For the
first time in all the history of the world, women of warring nations
and women of neutral nations had come together to lift up their voices
in protest against war, through which the women and the workers gain
nothing and lose all.
(5)
Harriet
Pass Freidenreich,
Aletta
Jacobs (1996)
A
pioneering physician and feminist, Aletta Jacobs had a twentieth-century
vision, even though she lived most of her life during the Victorian
era. As the first woman to attend university and receive a medical
degree in the Netherlands, who then managed to combine a career with
a companionate marriage and political activism, she can serve as a
role model for modern professional women, although her example was
difficult for other women of her own generation to emulate. Jacobs
established what is often considered the first birth control clinic
in the world. She also spearheaded campaigns for the deregulation
of prostitution, the improvement of working conditions for women,
and the introduction of woman suffrage in Holland. She was a prominent
leader in both Dutch and international suffrage organizations and
in the women's peace movement during World War I.
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