During the past century, Dutch culture and society were shaped in important ways by the three feminist waves which thoroughly transformed the position of women in the West. This chapter cannot offer a comprehensive overview of these changes nor does it address the sheer facts and figures. Discussions about the effects of the feminist waves invariably involve key indicators and focus on questions such as: what is the proportion of women in full-time employment; what are their career opportunities for leading positions; what is the glass ceiling in Dutch society; what childcare facilities are available; what is the male participation rate in care and domestic work; what are the pay differences between men and women, and so on. A presentation of facts and figures can at least partly answer such questions. However, in order to understand the differences in gender relations expressed by those figures, it is essential to be informed about the history of feminist thought in the Netherlands and to be aware of the gender- specific structures of Dutch society in a transnational context.

Our purpose, therefore, is to highlight the ways in which feminism evolved in the Netherlands as an intellectual, cultural, and political movement. What have been the specific themes of first, second and third wave feminism in the Netherlands, and how can those themes be understood from a contemporary feminist perspective? In other words, what kind of continuities can we discern in feminist thought in the Netherlands during the past century, and what are its historical and geopolitical features? In this approach to feminist thought – which is characteristic of the third-wave feminist method – feminism is perceived as a form of cultural legacy, while historical knowledge is reconsidered from a contemporary perspective.

This chapter will discuss three Dutch feminist cultural artifacts – two novels and one documentary – which exemplify the story of Dutch feminism in academia, art and activism. Analyzing these three waves in a chronological order will show how third-wave feminism envelops the discourses of the second and the first. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the way that insight can enrich our scholarly understanding of first and second wave's artifacts.