Patchwork politics in the Netherlands, 1946-50: women,gender and the world war II trauma[1]

Abstract

This paper describes the campaign launched in 1946 by a prominent Dutch feminist, resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor, to make women wear so-called National Celebration Skirts, homemade patchwork skirts constructed of, for instance, old pieces of cloth of family members and friends that were killed by the Germans or of Jewish children hiding from the German persecutors. The skirts were to be worn on public holidays as well as in private celebrations. The campaigners supposed that by making such skirts women could cope with their wartime experiences. The Celebration Skirt is analysed as a female mode of political expression to be understood in the context of the politics of war, reconstruction and gender. The story of the skirt refutes some standard Dutch historiography on (the failure of) post-war renewal; it gives new information on what happened to women after the war, and on the ways in which some women tried to overcome their grief; and it contributes to the women's studies debate on, ‘equality and Difference’.