Wilhelmina Drucker

Vocation

Lifestyle

Traits

Dutch politician and writer, who was a model for the Dolle Mina second wave feminism in the Netherlands. Wilhelmina "Mina" Drucker was the illegal child of the rich German banker and millionaire Louis Drucker (1805-1884) and the hat maker Constantia Christina Lensing (1815-1902). Mina and her sister Louise (1845-1898) were not legally adopted by the father, though he contributed financially to their upbringing. But for Mina there was no money to study and became at young age a needlewoman. When Mina was 22 years old, her father married another unmarried women Therese Temme with whom he had been living and adopted her six children. They all were able to study and became renters when Louis Drucker died. One of them was Hendrik Lodewijk Drucker (1857-1917), a liberal politician. Another famous half brother Jean Carl Joseph Drucker (31-7-1862, Amsterdam - 30 August 1917, Montreux became a decorated art collector (1885-1900) who contributed to the Rijksmuseum (1903, Drucker-Fraser collection). But Mina and her sister Louise were excluded. They reacted to the perceived injustice by writing under the pen-name G. en E. Prezcier a roman à clef George David (1885), that accused the married mother of misdeed. Louise withdrew from the clashes, but Mina kept on fighting using the name Drucker and eventually got a settlement in 1888 after a lawsuit against Hendrik Lodewijk Drucker, that enabled her to spent the rest of her time to the public cause as a rich, free and unmarried women. She and other women from radical and socialist circles set up De Vrouw (The Woman), a weekly magazine for women and girls. In 1889 Drucker founded the Vrije Vrouwen Vereeniging (VVV, or Free Women's Association), which in 1894 developed into the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Women's Rights Association). In 1891 Drucker represented the VVV at the International Socialist Labor Congress in Brussels, the second congress of the Second International, where she and delegates from Germany, Austria and Italy called for a resolution that the manifestos of all countries' socialist parties' should include a call for full legal and political equality of men and women - this resolution was adopted by the congress. In 1893 Drucker and her right-hand-woman Dora Schook-Haver founded the weekly magazine Evolutie (Evolution) - this lasted until 1926. Drucker also lectured throughout the Netherlands, got involved in the establishment of several women's trade unions and in 1897 became a member of the newly founded Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming (OV, or Women's Mutual Protection Society), which worked for the rights of unmarried mothers and their children. Drucker stated that the OV should be a militant organisation uniting all women - married or unmarried, with or without children - to work in the public sphere for women's rights and against unjust laws and outdated morality. She explained her thinking and ideas on the mission and role of the OV, laying the foundations for later activist organisations such as Blijf van mijn Lijf ('Stay away from my body, a network of women's shelters) and Vrouwen tegen Verkrachting (Women against Rape). The feminist group Dolle Mina, set up in 1969, was called 'IJzeren Mina' (Iron Mina) in a feminist variation of Drucker's nickname. Drucker died 5 December 1925 in Amsterdam. She left much of her capital to social causes, like education for the poor. Link to Wikipedia