Lizzy van Dorp

Who was Lizzy van Dorp?

Elisabeth Carolina "Lizzy" van Dorp was a Dutch lawyer, economist, politician and feminist.

Van Dorp studied law at Leiden University, obtaining a degree in 1901 and a promotion in 1903. She then practiced private law, and became active in various feminist movements, although she opposed the more radical forms of feminism - her focus was on instituting female suffrage.

In 1915, she was invited to join the editorial team of the Economist, a leading Dutch economics journal. In the 1920s she became swayed by the political ideas of another liberal, Samuel van Houten.

In 1922, van Dorp became a parliamentarian for the Liberal Party, until 1925. After that the supported the Liberal State Party.

At the end of the 1930s, she became an avid traveller, with stay-overs in Switzerland and Turkey. In 1940, she could not risk going back to the Netherlands, as another economist she had heavily criticized over the years, had become a powerful force in the National Socialist Movement and was close to the German occupier. Instead she veered for the Dutch Indies, her mother's country of birth.

Van Dorp died in a Japanese internment camp on Java, three weeks after the capitulation of Japanese forces. She had been interned there for over three years.