#empowerment The miracle of modern young woman. Maarten van Rossem in sixty years of women emancipation. In sixty years, women became self-conscious and assertive. Maarten looks back at that lightning fast change with surprise.

I grew up at a time when women were systematically discriminated against. This happened not only on the basis of uncodified norms and values, but also on the basis of legislation. In my childhood, I wasn't aware of that at all. After all, the world in which a child grows up is usually a natural world.

As a child, I did not know that the married woman in the Netherlands was “incapacitated” for a long time: a married woman could not conclude a legally valid agreement without her husband's consent. Nor was she able to open a bank account or make decisions about her children without permission. That incapacity of action was not abolished until 1956.


Emancipation