To gain more insight into the history of feminism in The Netherlands and how women started taking actions to ensure their safety, we set up a meeting with Henriette van Der. To meet this influential lady in the political history of Netherlands our team travelled to the beautiful city of Leiden. 
The city has beautifully preserved its cultural heritage and we actually got to see some 19th century windmills, something characteristic of the Dutch landscape and a symbol of the Dutch struggle with water.
Talking to Henriette was an insightful experience for our team. She told us about some early measures that were taken to make city’s safer for women. Like the inclusion of female architects in the urban planning process and and introducing women as the head of schools. Amongst various roles that she held throughout her career, she told us that when she was the Alderman of the municipality, she took measures to dissolve the cultural differences of immigrant women who were living in the area. She told us how they set up bike lessons free of cost for them and allowing them to access the swimming pool once a week, when it would be closed for the men. Such measures taken by her also attracted substantial criticism from her male colleagues and other Dutch natives. An interesting example that she gave us was how that how a group of women would go and cut the hedges around the bike lanes and the parks so that women feel safer when biking through during late hours of the night. Talking to her provided us with some great information and examples that we could use for our project.
