Lyda Verstegen

Who is Lyda Verstegen?

Lyda Verstegen is a Dutch lawyer and women's rights activist, and served as the 13th President of the International Alliance of Women as well as its Chief Representative to the United Nations from 2010 to 2013. The IAW has associate and affiliated societies in 52 countries. She was elected President at the Congress in South Africa in 2010. She is a former President of the women's rights organization Vrouwenbelangen in the Netherlands. She has also been chair of the Appeals Commission for Personnel of the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Netherlands. She is married to diplomat Floor Kist. They have three children, Anne-Martijntje, Florentius and Heleen.

Verstegen graduated from the University of Leiden with a Law degree in 1959. In 1961, Verstegen was a deputy clerk and appointed to be acting Registrar to the Dutch House of Representatives. At the same time that another woman, Joke Stoffels-van Haaften, was acting President of the Senate. During debate, female Member of Parliament Tineke Schilthuis stood in the pulpit on the Parliament's podium stage, located beside where Verstegen and Stoffels-van Haaften were seated. Schilthuis noted that this was the first occasion that the podium of the Netherlands' Parliament was entirely filled with women, which she said was "a symbol of the emancipation of women in public life". The event was photographed and published in newspapers. Verstegen is a former president of Vrouwenbelangen, a women's rights organization founded in the Netherlands in 1894.