women's movement since 1798, of which the book provided an overview.42 Van
moeder op dochter (two editions in 1948) was revised, updated and republished in
1968 and 1977, and stillis the most'complete' overview of the women's movement
in the Netherlands.
Lacking the support of an active women's movement with a vivid and scholarly
interest in the movement's past, the IAV in the decades of the 19 50s to 1970s
employed only a qualified librarian, not a trained archivist. Archives were acquired
on an ad-hoc basis, i.e., when the librarian 'ran into one' or when someone
happened to offer an archive to the IAV, but there was no active acquisition policy.
The archives that came in - generally from Dutch women's organizations and Dutch
women who were or had been active in the women's movement - were simply stored
away in bookcases; they were not processed or used for research. This quiet period in
the IAV's history ended with the emergence of the second wave of the women's
movement.
The Second Feminist Wave and the Creation of a Professional
Archival Department (Late 1960s-1991)
In 1967 socialist feminist Joke Smit published 'Het onbehagen bij de vrouw', an
article generally considered the beginning of the so-called Second Feminist Wave in
the Netherlands.43 In 1968 Man Vrouw Maatschappij (MVM) was established,
Dolle Mina in 1969. From that time onwards, but especially in the 1970s and 1980s,
numerous feminist action groups, committees, and organizations came into
being.44 Although this increase in women's activism did not mean that the material
these groups created immediately or automatically came to the IAV, the quiet years
in the history of the IAV were definitely over.
Since its founding in 193 5, the IAV had shared space with the International Institute
of Social History, occupying a few rooms of its own within the IISH. In 1981,
however, the IAV moved to a bigger location, at Keizersgracht 10 in Amsterdam,
which it shared with the Informatie en Documentatie Centrum voor de vrouwen
beweging (IDC), the feminist journal LOVER, and the Stichting Vrouwen in de
Beeldende Kunst (SVBK). The IAV experienced enormous growth during this period,
both in terms of the number of visitors, the size of its collections, and the number of
people working at the institute.45 Following a period of successful 'cohabitation' and
increasing cooperation, the IAV, IDC and LOVER merged in 1988, forming the
Internationaal Informatiecentrum en Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging (IIAV).
During this process of change and growth for the IAV, its archival department finally
came into being as well. Since 1974, women's history groups had been forming at
Dutch universities, and students came to the IAV looking for information and
sources about women's history in the Netherlands.46 Historian Selma Leydesdorff
used the archive of the National Exhibition of Women's Labor 1898 for her
innovative MA thesis about women's cottage industry, which resulted in her book
Verborgen arbeid vergeten arbeid: one of the first publications of the new women's
history.47 The National Exhibition of Women's Labor in 1898 was a major event in
the history of the Dutch women's movement. Its archive (1.4 meters) would be
extensively used by researchers of women's history in the late 1970s and 1980s, and
it was the first IAV archive to be officially and professionally inventoried. The
archivist was Atie van der Horst, who had worked at the IAV for four hours a week
since 1977, and the result was published in 1980.48
In 1982, the IAV decided to start actively acquiring archival material again, for the
first time since the 1930s. This effort focused on the 'ego' or personal documents of
ordinary or 'unknown' women, especially diaries and letters, in line with the
emphasis in contemporary women's history to explore and write 'history-from-
below' rather than focus on famous women.49 This approach also responded to the
need in women's history for historical sources about women in the private sphere
ARCHIEFVORMER EN PARTICULIER ARCHIEF
The IAV in 1977, Herengracht 262, Amsterdam
Source: Picture archive IAV no. 100007500; photographer unknown.
42 W.H. Posthumus-van der Goot (ed.), Van moeder op dochter. Het aandeel van de vrouw in een veranderende
wereld (Leiden 1948); Francisca de Haan and Annette Mevis, 'Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot', in:
Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland 8 (Amsterdam 2000) 58-61.
43 Joke Kool-Smit, 'Het onbehagen bij de vrouw' De Gids 130: 9/10 (1967) 267-281; Irene Costera Meijer, Het
persoonlijke wordt politiek. Feministische bewustwording in Nederland 1965-1980 (Amsterdam 1996); Vilan
van de Loo, De vrouw beslist. De tweede feministische golf in Nederland (Wormer 2005).
44 There is no proper history of the Dutch Second Feminist Wave yet, either in a national frame or including its
transnational dimensions. A popular beginning was made with Van de Loo, De vrouw beslist.
451AV/IIAV Annual Reports.
160
FRANCISCA DE HAAN AND ANNETTE MEVIS THE MAKING OF THE COLLECTION INTERNATIONAAL ARCHIEF
VOOR DE VROUWENBEWEGING (iAV)
46 Francisca de Haan, 'Women's History Behind the Dykes: Reflections on the Situation in the Netherlands',
in: Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson and Jane Rendall (eds.), Writing Women's History. International
Perspectives (London etc. 1991) 259-277.
47 Selma Leydesdorff, Verborgen arbeid vergeten arbeid. Een verkenning in de geschiedenis van de vrouwenarbeid rond
negentienhonderd (Assen 1977).
48 Whereas earlier researchers mainly used the exhibition's archive to explore specific forms of women's labor,
the exhibition itself and its archive took central stage in a book published on the occasion of its centenary in
1998 (Maria Grever and Berteke Waaldijk, Feministische Openbaarheid. De Nationale Tentoonstelling van
Vrouwenarbeid in 1898 (Amsterdam 1998). Translation: Transforming the Public Sphere. The Dutch National
Exhibition of Women's Labor in 1898 (Durham 2004).
49 Pioneering historians include Paul Thompson and Sheila Rowbotham; in 1976 the periodical History
Workshop Journal was started.
161