This time the theme of
Sunday Stamps is 'Women on stamps'. 8 March is of course Women's day, and March appears to be Women's History Month.
Also Hawwa already wrote about it in her
contribution, and I agree, I am surprised, too, by the fact that there are far more famous men on stamps than women.
Also books on history and books on music and art history still seem to describe a 'male-based' history instead of an 'all people' history. As if women contributed almost nothing to history, art and music, compared to men!..
Sadly during the ages women have had less opportunities to compose and write than men, partly because they were supposed to raise children and manage the household. Or work on the land, as was the fate of male workers, too, of course.
And whenever women succeeded to compose music or create art, they were overshadowed by men. Their compositions sometimes were published under the name of a man (for instance Felix Mendelssohn has some compositions under his own name, which had been composed by his sister
Fanny Mendelssohn!).
And why, for example, is
Camille Claudel so much more unknown as a sculptor than Auguste Rodin?
Let 'herstory' become clear!
Fortunately last year a thick book was issued, unique in the Netherlands, describing 1001 women who had been important to Dutch history (see also
this lexicon).
Also this stamp sheet was issued:
It shows six women (four of them doubled), which of course is nice.
By the way, one of these women
Belle van Zuylen, has been on a stamp in 1978 (that is, her handwriting has). See it on
this blog, it's the stamp showing a letter. Striking is the fact that the primary design of this stamp was deleted. It says 'I have no talent to be subservient' (see the black-and-white stamp, in Dutch: 'Ik heb geen talent voor onderdanigheid'). But - even though it was true, also for e.g.
Annie M.G. Schmidt and many more women who didn't want to bear the oppressive obligations which women had to face those days - it was considered too critical for a stamp.
So I really am happy that this stamp sheet was issued. However, still there are many people missing on Dutch stamps. For instance
Aletta Jacobs, who was the first woman who studied medicine at a Dutch university.
By her profession she helped a lot of women in need. And besides that she fought for women's
right to vote. This finally became possible in the Netherlands in 1922. And while there are few stamps issued for this women's right to vote, also the writer of 'Postzegelblog' (stamp blog) is wondering why Aletta Jacobs
never has been shown herself on a Dutch stamp so far.
