Wilhelmina Drucker
Wilhelmina Drucker (30 September 1847 – 5 December 1925) was a Dutch politician, writer, and one of the country’s first feminists. She used the pen names Gipsy, Gitano, and E. Prezcier. Her father, Louis Drucker, would not marry her mother, Constantia Lensing, or recognise the children, so Wilhelmina grew up in hard circumstances.
She trained as a seamstress like her mother and became active in politics from 1886, joining socialist and suffrage groups. Socialism shaped her view that women needed rights and respect.
Under a pseudonym she wrote a book criticizing her father’s double standards for recognising only children from wealthier relationships. She also won a lawsuit against her half-brother over an inheritance, gaining financial independence.
Together with other radical women she started the weekly De Vrouw. In 1889 she founded the Vrije Vrouwen Vereeniging, which later became the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Women’s Rights Association). In 1891 she represented the VVV at an international socialist congress, pushing for equal rights for women in party manifestos.
In 1893 Drucker and Dora Schook-Haver launched Evolutie, a weekly that lasted for years. She lectured across the Netherlands, helped form women’s unions, and in 1897 joined the Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming, which supported unmarried mothers and their children. She argued that the VOV should unite all women to push for rights and against old morality.
Her militant stance earned her the nicknames Ijzeren Mina and Dolle Mina. The later feminist group Dolle Mina, founded in 1970, was named after her and held a famous brassière-burning ceremony in Amsterdam.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 12:42 (CET).