Education and the Emancipation of Jewish Girls in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the Netherlands

Abstract

In the Netherlands the first girl admitted to a qualifying secondary education and the first female university student were sisters, Frederika and Aletta Jacobs. These girls, twelve- and seventeen-years old, entered the respective institutions in 1871 after the father and Aletta had made successful requests. In each case the admission brought an end to a long-standing male privilege. And in each case contemporaries conceived of these ambitious girls as exceptional and therefore raised hardly any objections. In reality however, the arrival of the Jacobs sisters initiated what amounted to a revolution in girls' education, as Dutch girls and women began to follow their examples in unexpected numbers.