A fighter for women' s health and rights: Aletta Jacobs

Aletta Jacobs( 1854-1929), was the daughter of a Jewish family in the Netherlands. Her father was a physician.
She was the first woman in Holland, who became in 1871 permission from Thorbecke, a liberal prime-minister, to become a doctor like her father.
She took a doctor's degree and became a physician in Amsterdam.

I will write about a part of her ambition in which she,
as being a woman, was heavily interested in: working class women in shops.
Specially the long time standing during their job.
She discovered, during conversations with these women in her consultingroom, that the many long standing hours in the shop, causes gynaecological dissorders.
By giving these saleswomen the possibility to sit during their job, it would solve their problems.

Aletta Jacobs thought, that she could change this situation and started a campaign.
Nevertheless, it took her 20 years before there came a lawchange, that employers obliged to offer seats to their staff.

All this happened more than 100 years ago.
Did this really changed something?
It seems AS IF it is okay now.

But how often do I see, that young and/or older saleswomen stands all day long?
As soon as I enter, as a client, a department store, the female shop assistant is standing!
They are busy with something, whatever that may be. Every now and then I start a conversation with an employee and ask her: 'Are you oblige to stand all day long?' The answer is: 'No, but my boss and the customers expect it'.
I try to explain that Aletta Jacobs, the first female physician in the Netherlands, had discovered in her work, that standing many hours, do damage to your sexual organs.
Standing, relieved with walking and sitting, is okay, but only standing is a dissaster for the body.
These women often have a feeling of being misunderstood. In the small talks, I try to open their eyes and mostly I succeed.
When I say good-bey to the saleswoman we both have a smile on our face. 
But, what we really need is a MENTALITYCHANGE of, both the bosses and the customers!!!

About 50 years ago, there was a change in who pushes the buggy and who do the dishes.
Was that meant as the great Revolution......???

leefse = keep alive
Aleke.

P.S. English is not my native language, but I use the principle: 'Not HOW I write,  but WHAT I write is important'.