Step by step, a practical experience

We are three fem-soc women. We work in quarters of a big city. We choose to work with women in those particular areas.

From inside different kinds of institutionalised models of cultural/educational vvork in neighbourhoods we work in some projects run by and for women.

These institutionalised community-centers exist throughout the whole country, especially in the workers areas in the big cities and the rural areas where there is a lack of jobs (unemployment). The "houses"receive their money for almost 100 per cent from the government and the lower administration, who particularly stimulate the so called underprivileged areas (kansarmen). However without defining exactly underprivileged, it is essentially for working with women.

First we will briefly explain the situation in the Netherlands concerning social work. In this paper we talk about four categories of social work:

1. educational work, outside the regular school system, aims to make people more conscious about their situation and the conditions they live and work in: young workers, young adults, groups from one profession, elderly people. There are courses in conference houses with a special theme or subject (volkshogescholen) and we have also more continual group work in the cities (VJV, piaatselijk vormingswerk).
2. social work, for people who need help for housing, money, divorce, social security, social assistance, family problems, foster-care or problems with medical and healthcare. Mostly help and advice is given individually but at present there is a development in working with groups by recognizing that the problems are collective and structural rather or as well as individual.
3.  work in neighbourhood areas with groups for entertainment in leisure time, so called social-cultural work. Beside this first object there is also the aim of political action and to develop a feeling for the interests of the specific class, minority group or category who visits the center (Klub en buurthuis werk )
4. psychological-health service institutes. People of all ages find help in different kinds of therapy. Workers like psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses are in charge of these institutes. Originally their approach was a very traditional and hierarchic one. Generally speaking people from the lower class do not enter for help and therapy, (geestelijke gezondheidszorg).

The last few years feminism has turned up in some fields of social work. Patients and clients refuse male help and advice and women workers or counsellors prefer to work with specific women's groups and they try to work with them in a feminist way.

This work in the beginning state, which is done from inside traditional or established organisations, meets much resistance and demands a continuing struggle to receive permission and recognition and to develop feminist working methods.

For instance, we know a service center for psychological health which has a group of women therapists, discussing what it is to work as feminist therapists and about specific women's problems in therapy. In the same institute there is a women-client group.

For instance, in an institute for social work there is a group of unmarried mothers not only talking about problems with raising their children but also trying to recognise and analyse their own position as a wife.

In educational work there is a run on "second chance" education. Now it is called "school for mothers" because only women visit the school to get a high school or gradeschool diploma (moeder-mavo).

Another new form of "permanent education" is the V.O.S. course. (Women's orientation about society). In a period of three years there have been more than 100 women's courses of this kind throughout the country. Women have a big need to enlarge their knowledge, whatever their motives might be.

In the section of social-cultural work, feminist workers have started specific women's groups for coffee talks, meetings for wives of immigrants and foreign labourers, talking groups for mothers of the playschool children, and consciousness-raising/discussion groups for women in the neighbourhood.

An example of women's work which is done outside existing organisations or institutions and which is done mostly/only by volunteers is VIDO. These groups are initiated by women in the ages between 40 and 60 and they come during the menopause. They have their own organisation and work without professional workers.

No It s not menopausal depression, it's the housewife blahs. no pay, no sick leave, no pension, no identity.

We mention specificaly VIDO, because it is close to our type of work, but in the free field of the women's movement we notice lots and lots of activities in different settings such as women's centers, women's bookshops, women's theater and music groups, writers' and radical therapists' groups.

Our work in the neighbourhoods.

Two different projects in two completely different parts of Amsterdam. One takes place in a 19th century workers' area, de Pijp: 48,000 inhabitants with small families, relatively more older people, students and two member families/households.

Lida works in a community organisation and initiated this women's project with 40 volunteers, mostly women with contacts in the women's movement and experience with working with women in one way or the other.

We started several groups, talking groups for younger and elderly women, groups about sex, English courses, Dutch for foreigners, yoga and talking, history workshop, fat women's group. Each group has two women out of the project/volunteer group.

We take care of our own publicity, write our own stencils and papers. Once a month there is an open meeting for all participants and new visitors.

Every month the project group meets and talks about "leadership", exchanges experiences and develops new ways of working.

We found a floor in an old house, which we rebuilt as a women's center in "the Pijp".

Until now we are financially self-supporting, but we have asked money from the government because this work is important and big enough (about 100 women) to be paid.

The other project is in the BOC, a neighbourhood center in the traditional sense. Two years ago some women started a talking group. After one season these women wanted a bigger program for women in their neighbour hood. Now there is a "Women's day" every week.

The house is situated in a 15 year old suburb of Amsterdam. People live in new built flat buildings: lower middle class people, labourers and white-collar workers are visitors of the center. The neighbourhood has a rich-looking image, the inhabitants moved in by municipal housing orders from several old parts of the city.

During "women's day" there are all kind of activities, courses in English, Dutch language and political information, handicraft, pottery, talking groups for older women about emancipation, dancing and relaxation, etc. In the evenings there is a cafe with discussion meetings and movies.

There are about 20 volunteers and 8 paid course leaders and one half time paid worker. Important is the role of 8 hostesses who work out the publicity, committee work, talk with new visitors, the organisation of the programs. There is a coordination group of about 5 women, volunteers and the paid staff worker who talk about the development of the program, attitude towards other institutions in the neighbourhood and the rest of the staff-members, to exchange experiences with each other and give ourselves support for working in the groups and in the project as a whole.

During the season there have been 70 women on average each Tuesday.

We have chosen this kind of work with many doubts and questions, but we have also come to some conclusions:

• we prefer to work with women in neighbourhoods instead of working e.g. in a women's center (vrouwenhuis) because we believe there is a direct link between the work in the neighbourhood and the women who participate in our projects; their situation is obviously nearer to them,problems are more recognisable and as a worker it is easier to make a direct relation to the actual interests of the women
• in neighbourhood centers there is relatively less shyness about coming: it is near by, situated within the quarter, near the school of the children, near familiar shops and shopping centers, the building/house is more or less well known, there is no need to go by public transport, publicity can be made in familiar shops, the library and post office, the women next door is with you or you can ask her to go
• working in a neighbourhood does not mean starting a radical-feminist program; it is necessary that women take their own time and rhythm and begin with their own situation and problems.

(For instance an English course is taken to get along better on holidays or to keep up with the children but during the class we talk about the position of women and read in English about this subject)

Women come for meeting and contact and talking; usually only in a second stage to work on feminist consciousness and liberation.

• money, a problem. We think that women's work should not be done only by volunteers. It should be paid by the government. But we realise what can happen if male bureaucrats decide what should and what should not be paid when they control that.
• speaking in feminist terms it goes without saying that the whole project is the responsibility of all women who participate. But, in practice it is a small group who decides what happens. Is it possible to reach collective feminist behaviour and work on an equal basis with visitors and initiating women?
• working with an established Institute means a continual defense of your work and ideas, to prove the value of the project. It means conflicts with colleagues and board, emotional stress of the workers in charge and the coordinating women
• we are fern soc women, for us this is fem soc work. The fem soc movement is more than an organisation with discussion and study groups. It is also an effort to integrate fem soc ideas in our work.

We want to make room in the fem soc movement for exchange and discussion of our experiences in order to make our policy and find new strategies.

29 mei 1977
lida van de broek, josien gusenhoven, bettie ritsema