After having defended her PhD thesis, dr. Anneke Ribberink (VU University Amsterdam) started writing a collective biography on five political female leaders in Western and Northern Europe. In this piece, she reflects on her research which covers the beginning of the twentieth century until present times.
Starting a new project
When I finished my doctoral dissertation about the second feminist wave in the Netherlands in October 1998, I was ready for a new project.[1] This was easily found. I had always been interested in female politicians, in the Netherlands and abroad. In the late 1990s I wrote a chapter in a conference volume on Margaret Thatcher, head of the British government from May 1979 until November 1990, and also the first woman in such a position in a democratic country in the West.[2] This chapter formed the beginning of a more elaborate research into Western and Northern female cabinet ministers and heads of government. The research will result in a collective biography of five famous female political leaders: Alva Myrdal (Sweden), Marga Klompé (Netherlands), Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom), Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway) and Angela Merkel (Germany). They were all pioneers in their specific political fields and I am interested in the question what they do have in common.[3]
This research project can be considered as a subject of gender history, but of course also as a political history topic. I find the discussions within the Research School Political History, about the need for historians to also write for a broader audience, useful. The experiences and significance of these five female politicians should not remain within the limits of the academic world. Therefore they are too important, both as actors and as role models.
Research questions
The basic questions of my research are how and why Myrdal, Klompé, Thatcher, Brundtland and Merkel came to the fore in a period when female political leadership was rare and how they did persevere. I am particularly interested in their competences and investigate a combination of three factors: their personality and achievements, their personal circumstances, and the specific historical and political context.
My thesis is that these women broke through the glass ceiling because they were exceptionally competent and thereby paved the way for other female politicians. Competence in female politicians is a complex concept. It cannot be viewed separately from views on masculinity and femininity that are deeply rooted in Western culture.
What appeals most to me in this research project is the way these women showed that historical situations can be changed, if you are capable and work hard enough, and of course, if the circumstances are not too unfavourable.
Collective biography
General facts and insights are useful, but there is also a need for biographical approaches to the lives of female political leaders, in order to gain a better understanding of the persons and their circumstances.[4] At the same time, I do not want to abandon the general perspective, which is why I have opted for a collective biography. Following some theorists in the field of collective biography, my aim is to trace commonalities and differences by comparing individual political lives.
In addition to the historical overviews and analyses, the corpus of sources on which I base myself consists mainly of published material: biographies, autobiographies, published memoirs and diaries, newspapers, and audiovisual sources, which are all present in sufficient quantity and quality.[5]
Interested in more details about my research? Please contact me for a more elaborate version of this text: j.c.a.p.ribberink@vu.nl; a.ribberink@live.nl
Publication is expected in 2025.
[1] ‘Leidsvrouwen en zaakwaarneemsters. Een geschiedenis van de Aktiegroep Man Vrouw Maatschappij (MVM) 1968-1973 (Hilversum 1998).
[2] Anneke Ribberink, ‘The two meanings of “Thatcherism”. Portrait of an outsider’, in: Idem and Hans Righart (eds.), The Great, the New and the British. Essays on Postwar Britain (Utrecht 2000) 67-89.
[3] R. and S. Henig, Women and political Power. Europe since 1945 (London/New York 2001) 56. The relevant countries are Sweden, Norway, France, the Nederlands, Spain, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Germany.
[4] Hans Renders, ‘De biografische methode’, in: G. Voerman and D.J. Wolffram, ed., Benaderingen van de geschiedenis van politiek (Groningen 2006) 39-42; B. Possing, Understanding Biographies. On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography. (Odense:2017).
[5] L. Harders en V. Lipphardt, ‘Kollektivbiografie in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte als qualitative und problemorientierte Methode’, Traverse, Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 2 (2006) 81-90: 81,84,87. Also see Possing, Understanding biographies.