Aletta H. Jacobs (1854–1929)

Aletta Jacobs was born in the small town of Sappemeer, The Netherlands, to an assimilated Jewish family. She was the eighth of 11 children. Her father was a country doctor who allowed Aletta to accompany him on visits to patients. He also persuaded the local boy's high school to allow his daughter to take classes in mathematics, history, Greek, and Latin. She wanted to be a doctor, but there were many barriers against this choice of profession for young women of her era. She received crucial support from two Jewish physicians who were close family friends and the Prime Minister, J.R. Thorbecke. In 1871, Aletta entered the University of Gröningen, along with her sister Charlotte; they were the first female students formally admitted to a Dutch university. Aletta went on to medical school at the University of Amsterdam, graduating in 1879 as the first woman physician in The Netherlands. She went for further clinical training to London, where she met leading British female doctors, birth-control advocates, and women's rights leaders. Aletta Jacobs returned to her homeland and set up a medical practice in Amsterdam. She made an important impact on women’s health by opening the first free birth clinic despite intense opposition from male colleagues, holding free clinic hours for poor women, and campaigning to improve the difficult working conditions of shop girls. In 1892, she married C.V. (Carel Victor) Gerritsen, a Dutch grain merchant, legislator and social reformer, with whom she had three children, including one who died in infancy. Dr. Jacobs attended the 1899 International Council of Women in London, where she met Susan B. Anthony. In 1903, Dr. Jacobs gave up her medical practice and committed herself full-time to the fight for women’s suffrage. She hosted a successful International Woman Suffrage Alliance conference in The Netherlands in 1908. She also helped bring feminist social and economic theory to The Netherlands by translating Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s book Women and Economics (1900), and Olive Schreiner’s Women and Labor (1910). In 1910-1911, she joined Carrie Chapman Catt on a 16-month round-the-world lecture tour, investigating the conditions of women and encouraging improvement wherever they could. Throughout the trip, Dr. Jacobs wrote lively reports for the Dutch paper De Telegraaf. After the outbreak of World War I, Dr. Jacobs used her international network to coordinate peace efforts. In 1915, she helped organize the International Congress of Women in The Hague, and she and Jane Addams later created the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, still considered the most important women's peace organization in the 20th century. During and after the war, she continued to lead Dutch women in their struggle for suffrage. Finally, Dutch women won the right to vote in 1919. Although her health and finances were failing, in her final years, Dr. Jacobs continued to travel and lecture until her death at age 75. Her autobiography was published as Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace.