Emilie Claeys

“Men must stop seeing women as their property, scapegoat, burden, and pleasure meat.” This is a quote from ZIJkant's ancestor: Emilie Claeys.

We stand here at the former textile museum to commemorate Emilie Claeys (born in 1855), one of the Belgian pioneers of the women's movement. As a textile worker, she stood on the barricades for equal education, equal pay, women's suffrage, and birth control. For Claeys, feminism goes hand in hand with socialism. She did not shy away from any controversial topics. This was not always well received, even within her own party.

Emilie Claeys was born on May 8, 1855, in a working-class family in Ghent. Her father was a café owner, and her mother was a home weaver. When her father died at a young age, she contributed to the family's income. To put food on the table for her four siblings, she worked as a spinner in a textile factory and as a maid for the bourgeoisie.

During her time in the textile factory, Claeys witnessed how poorly women in textile work were treated and developed her sense of justice and drive to bring social issues to light: “In the factory, we work 12 to 13 hours a day. Often we do the same work as men, yet we only receive half of what they earn. Not because we work less hard or provide lower quality work, but because we are women.”

When she became acquainted with the socialist movement, Claeys co-founded the Socialist Propaganda Club for Women in 1886. The Club advocated for women's suffrage, financial independence for women, and their right to work. Equality within the family, under the law, and in the labor market: that was what Emilie Claeys strived for.

Together with the Dutch Nellie van Kol, Claeys started the monthly magazine ‘De Vrouw’ in 1893, in which they published pleas for equal education, equal pay for equal work, and the abolition of the legal inferiority of women. Under the pseudonym Lilian, Claeys also wrote pamphlets for birth control and contraceptives, which were strictly prohibited at that time.

Thanks to the intervention of the Socialist Propaganda Club for Women, the Belgian Workers' Party (predecessor of Vooruit) included women's suffrage in its program in 1893. Nevertheless, the high-ranking gentlemen of the church and capital remained opposed to women's suffrage, as well as to the general singular suffrage for men. The liberal and Catholic parties wanted the BWP to give up the demand for women's suffrage, which eventually happened. Later, women's suffrage was revised and ultimately realized in Belgium in 1947, nearly 30 years after general suffrage for men was introduced.

After a militant burnout and a scandal in which Claeys was pointed at, she gradually disappeared from the scene. She led a withdrawn, impoverished existence until her death on February 16, 1943.

Thanks to Emilie Claeys, minds matured, and the women's movement grew stronger. She was a pioneer of the women’s movement and initiated a process of emancipation that was carried on by later feminists and eventually led to the granting of women's suffrage in 1948.

Even now, ZIJkant's themes are strongly imbued with Claeys' mission: equal pay for equal work, equal distribution of reproductive labor, control over one’s own body, and the political representation of women.

ZIJkant