42 Facts About Betsy Bakker-Nort

Bertha "Betsy" Bakker-Nort was a Dutch lawyer and politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives for the Free-thinking Democratic League from 1922 to 1942.

At age 34, Bakker-Nort started studying law at the University of Groningen after realising that fighting for women's rights required a thorough understanding of the law.

Betsy Bakker-Nort was re-elected four times and, during her time in the chamber, mainly argued the case for more women's rights concerning marriage and labour law.

Betsy Bakker-Nort was active internationally, taking a leading role in preparing the International Woman Suffrage Alliance's actions for the 1930 League of Nations conference on international law.

Bertha "Betsy Bakker-Nort" Nort was born on 8 May 1874 in Groningen, Netherlands, the youngest of four daughters of a non-religious Jewish couple, Joseph Nort and Wilhelmina van der Wijk.

Betsy Bakker-Nort grew up mostly around women, including two maids.

Betsy Bakker-Nort later said that, as a young girl, it struck her as unfair that her independent mother was not allowed to vote in local council elections, "yet each man was, no matter how dumb".

Betsy Bakker-Nort translated around 40 Danish, Norwegian and Swedish works, including feminist novels and children's books, into Dutch.

Betsy Bakker-Nort observed that in Scandinavia, a woman's position in society was much better than in the Netherlands.

Betsy Bakker-Nort joined the Dutch Association for Women's Suffrage, and helped start its local Groningen chapter.

In 1908, at age 34, Betsy Bakker-Nort started studying law at the University of Groningen after realising that the fight for women's rights required comprehensive legal knowledge.

Betsy Bakker-Nort said that the husband's marital power was solely based on his ability to vote and elect policymakers.

Betsy Bakker-Nort was the 14th woman to enrol at the University of Groningen.

Betsy Bakker-Nort was the first woman to earn a doctorate in law at a Dutch university based on a fully-fledged research study.

Betsy Bakker-Nort considered getting women the right to vote to be a principal means to achieve the overhaul of marriage law, a standard view among first wave feminists.

Betsy Bakker-Nort said that getting the vote was essential to make progress on women's issues and that it was a fundamental right for women to have a say in all matters.

Betsy Bakker-Nort co-authored a report for the VVS outlining provisions she thought should be included in a modern marriage law and wrote in a column in its monthly magazine that the old laws, which made married women legally incapacitated, denied them any say over their children and property and thus needed to be reformed.

Betsy Bakker-Nort singled out women's legal status of "incompetent to act", calling it humiliating.

The VDB retained its five seats, and Betsy Bakker-Nort was elected member of the House of Representatives in July 1922 as the party's first female representative.

Betsy Bakker-Nort was one of seven women elected altogether out of 100 members.

Nevertheless, Betsy Bakker-Nort was re-elected, and the VDB went from holding five to seven parliamentary seats.

Betsy Bakker-Nort appointed a male, Samuel van Houten, an 89-year-old veteran of Dutch politics, as the committee's president.

However, in 1928, Betsy Bakker-Nort again made a plea in parliament to end the legal incompetency of married women, but it was rejected by the Christian majority.

Betsy Bakker-Nort took a leading role in preparing the International Woman Suffrage Alliance's actions for the 1930 League of Nations conference on international law.

Betsy Bakker-Nort said the black dresses of the Dutch women amidst colourful ones of other nations created a "rather painful situation" for the hosts and showed how far behind the Netherlands was, as its laws were "still based on the obsolete principle of subjection of women to men".

Betsy Bakker-Nort continued to fight for the right of a married woman to choose to keep her nationality.

In 1933 Betsy Bakker-Nort accepted an invitation from German communist leader Willi Munzenberg to travel to London and join an international commission of foreign legal experts participating in a counter-trial of the arson case of the Reichstag fire.

Betsy Bakker-Nort urged the Dutch people to value the freedom and justice that democracy provided and to fight all who aimed to curtail them.

Betsy Bakker-Nort had tried to make the firing of married teachers temporary, but her amendment failed.

At a parliamentary budget review in 1935, Betsy Bakker-Nort condemned Germany's new marriage law, called the German Blood Protection Law, which banned Aryans, a now-obsolete historical race concept describing people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping, from marrying Jews.

Betsy Bakker-Nort argued that because it was impossible to determine who was Jewish and who was Aryan, the rules of the treaty did not apply, and the Dutch would not have to revoke the convention's agreement.

The election results did not disappoint Betsy Bakker-Nort; she said voters had not punished the VDB and had understood why the party had to allow some women's rights to erode.

Betsy Bakker-Nort said Romme pretended to base his exclusion of married women from the workforce on principle grounds that the husband was the breadwinner and the wife had to look after the family, but illogically did not apply this principle when companies needed the women.

In May 1940, just days before the German invasion of the Netherlands, Betsy Bakker-Nort announced she would not stand again in the 1941 election, leaving it to the next generation.

Betsy Bakker-Nort had spent eighteen years in the House, addressing parliament mainly on the issues of justice, education, and labour, and for the majority of her stay, was on the Standing Committee for Private and Criminal Law.

Betsy Bakker-Nort had never belonged to a Jewish denomination and had renounced her Jewishness, but she did value Jewish traditions.

Betsy Bakker-Nort moved to Utrecht and did not return to parliament.

Betsy Bakker-Nort died in Utrecht on 23 May 1946, aged 72.

Betsy Bakker-Nort praised her drive to get women the vote, without the militant aspects of the English suffragettes, and her tireless efforts to reform marital law and labour laws.

Betsy Bakker-Nort urged the country's young women to realise how much they owed to the pioneers of the women's movement, of whom Bakker-Nort was one of the most prominent.

Braun wrote in 2013 that in the 21st century, Betsy Bakker-Nort is seen as a transition figure who was part of the first wave of feminism in the Netherlands that got women the vote but continued the fight for more rights.

In 2003, many lost papers, notes, photos, pamphlets, and lectures that Betsy Bakker-Nort had kept resurfaced.