Anneke van Baalen/De Bonte Was Fonds

Named fund at Mama Cash since 2007

In 2007, Marijke Ekelschot established the Anneke van Baalen/De Bonte Was Fund (The Coloured Laundry Fund), named after her deceased partner and the feminist publishing company in which they were both involved.

Anneke van Baalen was the most important theorist, writer and source of inspiration for radical feminism in The Netherlands. In the 1970s, she initiated the consciousness-raising movement and was a co-founder of the writers’ cooperative and publishing company De Bonte Was. She published a wide range of works, including the book Geschiedenis van de Vrouwentoekomst (A History of the Future of Women), co-authored with her life partner, Marijke Ekelschot.

De Bonte Was was a feminist publishing house run by a cooperative that published affordable and subversive books on key topics in everyday women’s lives from 1974 to 1992. One of its purposes was to spread feminist thought beyond the feminist scene in Amsterdam. The published titles included Ze leefden nog lang en gelukkig (They lived happily ever after), Vrouwen over seksualiteit (Women on Sexuality), and Het Moederboek (The Mother’s Book). The books were circulated widely and have made a massive contribution to feminist awareness amongst thousands of women in The Netherlands.

Marijke Ekelschot says: ‘The profits of our publishing company and my own savings were put into the Anneke van Baalen/De Bonte Was Fund. A nice incidental benefit of a named fund is that the tax authorities receive a considerably lower amount of euros from me, on account of my annual donation. That means a larger, though indirect, ‘tax contribution’ to the enhancement of women’s rights. But obviously this fund is also a special way to commemorate Anneke and her work.’