Recent Challenges and Changes
One of the most important challenges since the 1980s for the IAV/IIAV/Aletta as
a whole, including its archival department, has been to ensure ethnic diversity or a
proper multicultural representation within the institute and its collections. Until
the 1980s, the IAV's predominantly white and middle-class character was not
consciously recognized, let alone problematized. This changed to some extent with
Black women's criticism of the overwhelmingly white character of women's studies
and the creation of academic postcolonial studies.59 One of the main concerns - not
only directed at the IAV but broader - was the absence and/or low visibility of
information on Black, migrant and refugee women. In order to remedy this,
Flamboyant, a national information center for and about Black, migrant and
refugee women, was founded in 1985. In 1991, however, the Directie Coördinatie
Emancipatiebeleid DCE)the Dutch governmental agency responsible for women's
emancipation and for funding women's projects, decided to stop financing
Flamboyant and requested that the IIAV continue the bibliographical project
Flamboyant had started. DCE also temporarily increased the IIAV's funding so that
it could develop its capacities for collecting, organizing and making accessible
information on Black, migrant and refugee women. In close cooperation with the
Black, migrant and refugee women's movement, the IIAV developed a number of
projects and hired someone for this particular purpose. Since June 1998, the
institute has integrated the efforts to acquire and make accessible material about
and from Black and migrant women into its regular work. The archival department
began in 1992 more actively to acquire material from the Black, migrant and refugee
women's movement,60 and in 1997 received the first archive of a Black women's
organization: the Landelijke Vereniging van Alleenstaande Arabische Vrouwen.
The archive of ZAMI is another important archive of Black and migrant women
housed in the institute.61 The archival department continues to see the acquisition
of a diverse range of women's cultural heritage material as one of its most important
tasks.
Another challenge facing the archival department is related to the ongoing
digitization of information. Archives are increasingly comprised of electronic and
digital items. Some organizations and individuals no longer build paper archives at
all, because they only exist on the Internet, such as the Webgrrls.62 The
technological developments demand a different role from the archivist. More so
than with regular paper documents, archivists can no longer just wait until a private
archive becomes available or an organization stops functioning. Rather, archivists
will have to acquire archival records even more actively than before, prior to the
moment they cease to exist. Paper, to some extent, is patient, but bits and bytes are
not.
A last important change is that the IIAV in recent years has begun to actively create
oral history sources. Oral history started to bloom in the 1970s as part of the then
dominant social history and general interest in 'history-from-below.Feminist
historians embraced oral history because it enabled them to find 'women's voices'
- very much in line with the credo of the new women's history - and to co-create
new sources for writing women's history. However, unlike other similar institutions,
especially in the U.S.A., the IAV/IIAV did not actively collect, let alone create, oral
histories. This changed in 2005, under the leadership of the institute's new director,
the anthropologist Saskia Wieringa. Two projects were launched: one is the creation
of a calendar that shows the most important facts and events related to Black,
migrant and refugee women in the Netherlands, partially based on interviews; the
other is a video history project called 'Moving Women's History,' a collection of
video interviews with activists of the Dutch Second Feminist Wave, such as Dolle
Mina, as a supplement to the paper archives of this very important movement.63
ARCHIEFVORMER EN PARTICULIER ARCHIEF
Arrival of the original IAV archives from Moscow in May 2003 at Obiplein 4, Amsterdam.
From left to right: Annette Mevis, Annemarie Kloosterman, Babette Roelandschap, Marjet Douze,
Evelien Rijsbosch, Joke Blom and Ingrid Verver.
Source: Picture archive IAV no. 100015534; photographer Susanne Neugebauer.
59 The starting point in the Netherlands was the criticism by a group of Black women at the Winteruniversiteit
Vrouwenstudies in 1983, see Maayke Botman, Nancy Jouwe and Gloria Wekker (eds.) Caleidoscopische visies.
De zwarte, migranten- en vluchtelingenvrouwenbeweging in Nederland (Amsterdam 2001).
60 Amalia Deekman and Mariette Hermans, the authors of the article 'Heilig vuur. Bezieling en kracht in de
organisatievorming van dezmv-vrouwenbeweging in Nederland', in: Botman, Caleidoscopische visies, write
on page 81-82: "We have chosen to use the material in the IIAV because it is the only internationally orien
ted information center in the Netherlands that specifically collects and preserves the heritage of women
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FRANCISCA DE HAAN AND ANNETTE MEVIS THE MAKING OF THE COLLECTION INTERNATIONAAL ARCHIEF
VOOR DE VROUWENBEWEGING (iAV)
for generations to come. In addition, since 1992 the IIAV has consciously collected material of the Black,
migrant and refugee women's movement. Because of this it plays a central role in preserving the heritage of
Black, migrant and refugee women" (our translation, FdH and AM).
61 ZAMI, founded on February 28,1991 in Amsterdam from within Flamboyant, is an intercultural center for
all Black and migrant women's organizations in Amsterdam. The Dutch government ended its funding of
ZAMI in January 2005; ZAMI was therefore forced to stop a number of its activities.
62 See: http://www.webgrrls.com, last accessed 10 January 2012.
63 See the chapters by Douze and Tjoa, and Keller and Pieterse in: Wieringa, Traveling Heritages.
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