Elizabeth van Dorp et la question des femmes à l’intersection des idéaux bourgeois et du libéralisme économique

Abstract

This paper situates the work of the first Dutch female economist Elizabeth (Lizzy) van Dorp on the women’s question within her broader economic and social views and it details her struggles to obtain a respected position within the economics profession in the first decades of the twentieth century. Van Dorp was one of the first female PhD’s in the Netherlands, she graduated in law in 1903. From 1920 onwards she worked as an economist and corresponded with the major economists of her age such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Edwin Cannan, John Maynard Keynes, and Frank Knight. During the first decade of her professional career, she campaigned for the right to vote for women and published on the right of (married) women to work. Van Dorp was a classical liberal, in line with the then dominant Austrian approach to economics, but despite these convictions she opposed the right for married women to work. We analyze this tension in her work by situating her early work in the feminism of the age, including her falling out with the more radical feminist Aletta Jacobs. We demonstrate that despite the Austrian policy views on monetary and trade matters, Van Dorp’s work is marked by her Christian, more precisely Remonstrant, ideals and the upper bourgeois milieu in which she grew up. We argue that her religious ideals and personal outlook made her prioritize personal freedom and ethical development in the private sphere over political and economic rights in the public sphere.