Bertha "Betsy" Bakker-Nort (8 May 187423 May 1946) was a Dutch lawyer and politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives for the Free-thinking Democratic League (VDB) from 1922 to 1942.
Born in Groningen, she became involved with the feminist movement in 1894, joining the Dutch Association for Women's Suffrage (VVVK), where she was mentored by Aletta Jacobs, one of the pioneering activists of the 19th century.
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. In the 1922 general election, the first in which women were allowed to vote, she was elected to parliament and became the VDB's first female representative. She 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. She was also 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. In 1933, she acted as a judge in a counter-trial in London of the arson case of the Reichstag fire.
After the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, Bakker-Nort did not return to parliament. From December 1942, she was interned at Westerbork transit camp and Camp Barneveld before the Germans moved her in September 1944 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Bohemia. She was liberated in June 1945. She died the following year. According to VDB chairman Pieter Oud, Bakker-Nort had accomplished the task Jacobs had given her: leading the women's movement.
Early life Bertha "Betsy" 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. Her father, a merchant, died when she was very young. She grew up mostly around women, including two maids. She 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". After finishing secondary school, she travelled to Sweden to study Scandinavian languages. She translated around 40 Danish, Norwegian and Swedish works, including feminist novels and children's books, into Dutch. She observed that in Scandinavia, a woman's position in society was much better than in the Netherlands.
Activism
After returning to the Netherlands in 1894, Nort became actively involved in the first wave of Dutch feminism. She joined the Dutch Association for Women's Suffrage (VVVK), and helped start its local Groningen chapter. Together with Aletta Jacobs, she went door to door to recruit new members. Jacobs, a fellow Groninger who was 20 years Nort's senior, was the first female student at a Dutch university and was one of the founders of the VVVK. She became Nort's mentor. In his 2007 history of the Free-thinking Democratic League (VDB), Meine Henk Klijnsma wrote that Jacobs likely recruited Nort for the VDB. They went from town to town to advocate for women's rights in speeches. In 1899 Nort started writing about women's issues, drawing upon her Scandinavian experience; her early work was published as columns in the feminist magazine Belang en Recht ("The Importance of the Law"). The historian Marianne Braun wrote that this early work showed her calm and determined approach and social-liberal orientation. In 1904, she married Gerrid Bakker, who was a grain merchant, translator, and fellow member of the VVVK, and changed her name to Bakker-Nort. They had no children.
In 1908, at age 34, Bakker-Nort started studying law at the University of Groningen after realising that the fight for women's rights required comprehensive legal knowledge. She said that the husband's marital power was solely based on his ability to vote and elect policymakers. She was the 14th woman to enrol at the University of Groningen. Bakker-Nort finished her degree in 1912. Two years later, she earned a doctorate from the University of Utrecht for her thesis on the legal position of married women across Western Europe. Bakker-Nort was the first woman to earn a doctorate in law at a Dutch university based on a fully-fledged research study. From her comparative study, she concluded that the position of Dutch married women was most unfavourable, not because the laws were that different, but because the Dutch courts interpreted them in a stricter way. Unable to restrict herself to comparisons, she added a reasoned plea for abolishing the part of the marital law that declared married women "incompetent to act". As described in the 1838 civil code, the status of married women was legally similar to that of minors and people with severe mental health problems. This meant that married women could not open a bank account, apply for a mortgage or insurance, or sign a labour agreement without their husbands' permission. Similar laws existed in other countries. After completing her thesis Bakker-Nort started to work as a lawyer and attorney, first in Groningen and, from 1930 onwards, in the Hague. She acted as the main legal expert for the VVVK.
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. She 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. In 1917 Dutch women obtained the right to stand in elections (passive suffrage), though they could not vote (active suffrage). Bakker-Nort continued to campaign with the VVVK for active suffrage. The women's suffrage campaign was won in 1919, when the women's right to vote became law, instigated by the VDB's Henri Marchant. Once the VVVK had achieved its goal, it changed its name to Association of Women Citizens (VVS) and widened its scope to gain more rights for women. 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. She singled out women's legal status of "incompetent to act", calling it humiliating. She joined the (VVAO), a more conservative group than the VVVK which did not always appreciate her progressive ideas and, for example, did not include her in their legal committee, despite her expertise.
Political career 1918–1924
By 1918, Bakker-Nort was one of two female board members of the VDB, Mien van Itallie-Van Embden being the other. In the 1918 general elections, the VDB reserved two spots for women on their candidate list and assigned them to Bakker-Nort and her mentor Jacobs. Both Bakker-Nort and Jacobs failed to be elected. However, Suze Groeneweg of the Social Democratic Workers' Party did succeed and became the first female member of the House of Representatives.
For the 1922 election, the first one in which women could vote, the VDB decided that a woman should be assigned the second position on its list of candidates, behind Marchant, whose bill had given women the vote. Due to serious illness, Jacobs could not take the position. Instead, it was given to Bakker-Nort, whom Jacobs saw as her successor. The party's election campaign focussed on legal reform, including the abolition of the Senate, the introduction of referendums, and the strengthening of the legal position of women. The VDB retained its five seats, and Bakker-Nort was elected member of the House of Representatives in July 1922 as the party's first female representative. She was one of seven women elected altogether out of 100 members. In her maiden speech, she introduced parliament to her views of the "scandalous" marriage law.
In her first year, Bakker-Nort introduced a bill for a so-called "sister-pension", to entitle sisters who had lived with and looked after widowed brothers to the right to their pension once they died. The bill passed in the House but failed in the Senate. Also, in her first year, she tried to amend the Ruijs de Beerenbrouck government's proposed legislation to make minor changes to the marriage law, proposing more comprehensive reform with equal rights for women. However, the three Christian parties of the coalition government rejected her amendment. Within the VDB, she was a role model for younger female party members Corry Tendeloo and Nancy Zeelenberg.
1925–1928 In the run-up to the 1925 election, Bakker-Nort argued the case in parliament against a government bill to allow councils to fire female teachers at state schools once they married, but with the majority of the House being members of Christian parties and opposing this, her arguments to stop the bill failed. Moreover, she considered it morally unacceptable that the state forced women into economic dependency on their husbands, adding that the husband and wife themselves should decide, not the state. Nevertheless, Bakker-Nort was re-elected, and the VDB went from holding five to seven parliamentary seats.
Soon after the First De Geer cabinet was formed, Bakker-Nort planned a new bill to reform marriage law. To that end, she created a broader platform and organised a cross-party committee consisting of members of the Liberal State Party, the Democratic Party, and the VDB. She appointed a male, Samuel van Houten, an 89-year-old veteran of Dutch politics, as the committee's president. Throughout 1927, members of the local chapters of the parties involved made and discussed proposals. However, in 1928, Bakker-Nort again made a plea in parliament to end the legal incompetency of married women, but it was rejected by the Christian majority.
1929–1933
In the 1929 election, Bakker-Nort kept her seat and was joined by van Itallie-Van Embden as the second female member of the VDB. At the end of the 1920s, Bakker-Nort was moderately optimistic about the future of women's rights in the Netherlands. While she expressed dismay at the fact that women still were banned from taking up public offices such as judge, notary, or mayor, she observed that women within the Catholic organisations were slowly taking up more feminist viewpoints, and she welcomed the first female member of parliament for any Christian party, Frida Katz. However, her optimism soon disappeared when the Great Depression led to fast-rising unemployment, and married women were fired to make way for male job-seekers. Nevertheless, she said that for the VDB, the economic downturn did not alter the principle of the individual’s right of self-determination, of equal pay for equal work, and of equal rights generally.
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. Women from 35 countries were present at the conference at the Peace Palace in the Hague, though they were not formally invited. The Alliance's main focus was nationality law, as, despite decades-long protests against laws that made married women automatically lose their nationality and take on their husbands', in many countries, little progress had been made towards achieving equality.