Since her inclusion in the Canon of Flanders last year, there has been renewed interest in the socialist and early feminist Emilie Claeys. In 1893, she was the first woman to be admitted to the national council of the Belgian Workers' Party, and she made her voice heard at national and international congresses, in the newspapers Vooruit and De Vrouw , and in a series of notable pamphlets for working-class women.
Emilie Claeys advocated for women's suffrage and birth control, and was ahead of her time with several radical and highly modern-seeming positions. Her story didn't end well: after an affair with a married man, she was pilloried by the Catholic and liberal press, which prematurely ended her political career in 1896.
But the memory of her courageous actions and poignant words lives on. The Friends of Ons Huis have taken the initiative to name a beautiful Art Nouveau hall on the fifth floor of Ons Huis on the Vrijdagmarkt in Ghent after this champion. The Emilie Claeys Hall inaugurated on February 10, 2024, with lectures by Gita Deneckere and Marleen Temmerman, among others. The event is supported by Linx+ and the non-profit organization Het Syndicaal Huis, among others.
A commemorative plaque will be placed in the new Emilie Claeys Hall. The hall will also be redesigned to house a small but permanent exhibition dedicated to the life of this early feminist, curated by Amsab-ISG.
See Emily Play
Discover the poignant and explicit ideas of Emilie Claeys from the comfort of your own home!
De Vrouw , the opinion magazine co-founded by Emilie Claeys, is available online at Amsab-ISG and is freely accessible.
Browse through eight issues of this early feminist magazine.
As women, as wives, and as mothers, we are always dependent on conditions outside the home, which threaten not only our existence but also that of our children. And then we are not even allowed to interfere with the political and public interests of the country! Why! Every day we are drawn into our deepest feelings, and we should not ask the how and why of these conditions? We should not ask why rent and food prices rise? Why are our sons being crippled and murdered? Why are our husbands wandering the streets without bread? Why are our children deprived of all education and upbringing from their earliest youth, to be locked up in the unhealthy pestilences of factories and workshops where they are ravaged in body and mind? [...] Every mismanagement of state affairs, every stock market speculation, every crisis we endure, throws us into hunger; leads countless of our sisters into the arms of prostitution, or drives them to suicide! And we should always be content with all this, we should always tolerate all this with closed eyes, plugged ears and hands folded in our laps?'
Emilie Claeys, Het vrouwenstemrecht , 1892, p. 19
