Ode to Anita Harting | From growing up in abject poverty to graduate and active from the beginning of the second feminist wave

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Anita Harting, prominent member of WOUW-Amsterdam

From growing up in great poverty to graduate and active from the beginning of the second feminist wave. One of the starters of Wouw-Amsterdam.

Activiteiten within the women's movement

Anita did a lot of work internationally for older women, for which there was hardly any attention in policy and among women in the Netherlands. Reported extensively on this within the Wouw-Amsterdam, see text below

Text spoken by Marjan Nieuwenhuis at her cremation

I first met Anita in the spring of 1971 at an editorial meeting to jointly publish a magazine by MVM, Sekstant and the COC. Attendees included Anneke van Baalen and Anita Harting from Man Vrouw Maatschappij (Man Woman Society) and myself as an alternate from the COC. Here I heard for the first time that women's discussion groups were being started. From MVM this was spectacular because this would be without men, MVM did not support this.

Anneke, Anita and Liesbeth van der Waals started the first discussion group, I myself joined the third discussion group, with Joke Kool-Smit and Bernardine Ensink, among others.

The discussion groups spread like an oil slick across the Netherlands and proved to meet a great need. From there, a women's conference was organized, among other things, which caused great consternation because men were not admitted, not even male journalists. 

Biography of Anita Harting, 1930 - 2023

Passed away May 30, 2023 after a long illness of 10 years, she was 92 years old. Anita has always been very active for the women's movement and Wouw, also internationally.

Anita came from a poor family, had a half-brother who was 13 years older. Her Surinamese father died of TB when she was 1 year old.

Anita's mother then had to go to work as a cleaning woman soon after she was born; note, no benefits existed at that time. Anita was taken to a nursery with the nuns. Her mother had been working from the age of 12, first as a maid, then as a cleaning woman.

Her elementary school teacher explicitly recommended the Gymnasium, although her mother did not feel like it. From 1942 to 1948, Anita attended the Barlaeus Gymnasium, where she developed her great love for languages and philosophy.

Already in elementary and high school she was annoyed by how men looked at women and that girls/women were treated differently. When in 1967 Joke Kool-Smit's article “Women's Discomfort” was published in De Gids, 1967, it was a great relief to her.

Anita had learned at an early age that a woman should be able to take care of herself. As a high school and college student, she always had side jobs because her mother did not earn enough.

Even when she was married, she almost always worked, even if part-time.

Anita: 'Especially after my school days I became aware of the unequal treatment. When I went to college in 1942 and applied for a scholarship for particularly good students, I was told 'we would love to give you the scholarship, but there is also a male candidate and of course he takes precedence'. Although she had higher grades. She then studied English with a normal scholarship that she later paid back. She also worked at an antiquarian bookshop from her school days.

From 1955 to 1965, Anita lived with husband in Geneva, working as a physicist at CERN. Here she spent several years in psychoanalysis, from which she came out very frustrated and continued to suffer for many years. In Switzerland, she also began working as a translator for the Council of Europe, among others. In 1960, her first daughter was born.

In 1965 her husband became a professor at the University of Amsterdam and they moved back to Amsterdam shortly before the birth of the second daughter.

Back in the Netherlands, Anita continued to do translation work for a long time.

She also began teaching English and French in schools from the mid-1970s.  Initially in normal secondary schools, later mainly in adult education, such as the Joke Smit Scholen Gemeenschap and was school dean for 5 years. 

Activities within the women's movement.

Was a.o. member of Man Vrouw Maatschappij (Man Woman Society) (1967); participation in first women's discussion group (1971); set up Women Calling Women (1973); participation UN Women Conference in 1985 and 1995; participation in WEMOS and OWN-E , Older Women's Network Europe, and OWN-NL. These organizations advocate for policies for older women in the Netherlands and Europe; Women's Interests since 1997; member of VIW, Women's Interests Working Group International Work.

Anita was often asked to participate in starting initiatives, e.g. as a board member of “Women and Music” and the working group “Women and Therapists”. Board member of already existing organizations such as the IAV (International Archive for the Women's Movement, then IIAV, now Atria).

Member of the national Braiding Wouw, founded in 1982, where she was asked to set up a Working Group on Foreign Countries, because Dutch women were almost never present at important international meetings. For this Foreign Group, Anita was closely involved in conferences in New York, Vienna, Berlin and Geneva.

N.B. Only in the 1980s did (international) attention come to the position of older women.

From its inception Anita was a member of Wouw-Amsterdam (1992). Among other things, she set up the Health Working Group and wrote for years in the Bulletin.

She was strongly committed to improving the position of older women.

Anita received a ribbon in 2001 for her achievements in the women's movement.