On busy days in Groningen, it’s easy to walk past the small bust of Aletta Jacobs facing the Harmonie building on the Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat. Several times a year, dozens of flowers lay at its foot, dedicated to a woman who achieved a string of firsts: Jacobs was the first Dutch woman to attend university, the first Dutch woman to become a physician and earn a PhD, and she was one of the country’s first feminists.
As a small child, Jacobs had big dreams. Born in Sappemeer, just 20 kilometers from Groningen, and one of 11 children, Jacobs made it clear she planned on following in the footsteps of her father, a General Practitioner. The story goes that as a little girl, she asked one of the captains passing through Sappemeer to take her to America because she couldn’t imagine becoming a housewife.
As a teen she knew she wanted to go to university—far from the norm in those days— and wrote a letter to then Minister Thorbecke requesting permission. Only one woman before her had ever seen the inside of Dutch university: in 1636, poet Anna Maria van Schurman attended lectures in Utrecht, tucked behind a curtain to avoid distracting male students. Thorbecke was seriously ill, but just two days before his death, he gave Jacobs permission to...well, make history.
Throughout her life, Jacobs was devoted to forging her own path, something modern feminists can relate to. She earned her doctorate from the University of Groningen in 1876 and moved her medical practice to Amsterdam, where she eventually opened a free clinic for working-class patients, including women completely exhausted from multiple pregnancies, and prostitutes. She was a big proponent of contraception, introducing the newly invented diaphragm to the Netherlands and improving its design (it was initially designed by German gynaecologist Wilhem P.J. Mensinga). Using any kind of birth control was heavily frowned on at the time because why would a woman in her ripe, child baring years interrupt the divine plan? But Jacobs insisted that motherhood should be voluntary.
As a side note, America’s birth control movement wouldn’t start until 1912, several decades later.
Jacobs also helped found the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (VvVK) in 1893, promoting women’s suffrage, which the Netherlands would finally grant in 1919. While Jacobs was married and had a son (who died shortly after being born), she double downed on her efforts after her husband died in 1905. She travelled the world in 1912 calling for women's suffrage, went to Berlin in 1919 to denounce post-war famine, and even went to Siberia to expose its gruesome POW-camps.
In recent years, Jacobs has received flack for several racist remarks she made in her diaries while traveling through South Africa, then Dutch India, and Indonesia, then the Dutch East Indies. Her remarks about European superiority unfortunately reflected what many Dutch colonists believed. So, while she pioneered for women’s rights she wasn’t perfect, failing to see the plight of those in other countries.
I’d like to think that Jacobs, or anyone who lived at that time, would have updated their views as the collective mindset changed to welcome greater diversity. I don’t see how society benefits from having one-dimensional heroes (the kinds who wear tights and dominate movie screens). We need heroes that are real, imperfect human beings who overcome obstacles while trying to make a difference. In that sense, Jacobs was such a woman, leading the way for women and women’s contraception, which has had a significant global impact. Contraception advances women’s economic empowerment, their educational prospects, and enhances their children’s lives. It does this for women of all races, nations and religions, which is an incredibly positive, lasting legacy to leave behind.
The University of Groningen Museum has a permanent exhibition dedicated to Jacobs, including the heavy ornate desk she worked at and where she wrote, “There is still so much to do in the world,” a few years before her death in 1929. Alas, there is always more to do, but Alleta Jacobs proved to women that standing up for what they believed in was worth because with perseverance, it paid off.
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