The late 1960s saw a spectacular revival of a movement that went back to a much older body of thought. Feminism. Feminists of the first hour saw themselves as part of a 'second' wave, to be distinguished from what they saw as the 'first wave': the women's movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time of, among other things, the fight for women's suffrage. In this article, read how the second feminist wave began and what it achieved.
The late 1960s saw a spectacular revival of a movement that went back to a much older body of thought. Feminism. Feminists of the first hour saw themselves as part of a 'second' wave, to be distinguished from what they saw as the 'first wave': the women's movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time of, among other things, the fight for women's suffrage. In this article, read how the second feminist wave began and what it achieved.
The women's movement, like all social movements, cannot be categorised under any one heading. From the beginning, feminism had an international character, although its focus was initially very much on the Western world. The Netherlands was mainly under the influence of the radical feminist movement in the United States and other social movements of the 1960s.
Action groups
In the Netherlands, a beginning of the 'second wave' can be marked with the founding of Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij (MVM) in 1968, followed by the action group Dolle Mina in late 1969, which went public with playful actions in the first months of 1970. For instance, they tied up public urinals with pink ribbons in protest against the lack of public toilets for women. Men were also active in MVM and Dolle Mina. Both groups campaigned for the abolition of legal discrimination against women, legal abortion, childcare and women's labour, among other things. Dolle Mina did not think Man-Woman-Society was radical enough. Looking at feminist idea development, Joke Smit's 1967 article Het onbehagen bij de vrouw is often cited as the starting point of the women's movement of the 'second wave' in the Netherlands.
