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| Author: | | Klasien Horstman |
| Title: | | Commercie en emancipatie, Sporen van de eerste feministische golf in het levensverzekeringsbedrijf (1880-1920) |
| in: | | Mineke Bosch, Amalia Deekman, Corrie van Eijl, Myriam Everard, Marieke Hellevoort, Eloe Kingma (eds.), Feminisme en verbeelding, Amsterdam, 1994 |
| Pp: | | 107-125 |
| Illustrations: | | yes |
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| Abstract: | | This article focuses on the traces of feminism found in literature about commercial life insurance companies in the Netherlands (1880-1920). It analyses images of women as clients and employees of insurance companies and shows that, for pragmatic reasons, these companies promulgated modern views on the economic independence of women. The insurance rhetoric introduced women into a modern individualistic world in which not only men, but women too, had to take care of themselves. Economic motives may therefore have promoted indifference with regard to gender, in sofar as profits were not at stake. So, commercial motives explain the feminism as well as the limits to feminism of insurance companies at the beginning of this century. |