ESSA Brussels: Marie Popelin

 

Marie Popelin was a Belgian journalist, feminist campaigner, and the first woman to receive a law doctorate in Belgium. She was born on December 16, 1846, in Brussels and received a better education than was typical for women at the time. She started teaching at a girl's school, but at the age of 37, she changed her career and began studying law. She graduated with a degree in law but when she applied for admission to the bar, she was denied. In the absence of any law forbidding women to do so, she appealed her case several times but ultimately was denied. She then turned to advocating legal reform to allow women to practice law, among other things. This was called the “Popelin Affair.”

Her argument was basically that sure, it is possible for women to receive an education, but the law prohibits women from actually using it. She established the Belgian League for the Rights of Women (Ligue belge du droit des femmes) in 1892 with the assistance of Isala Van Diest and Léonie La Fontaine and created, with American feminist May Wright Sewall’s encouragement, the Belgian section of the International Council of Women in 1893. She also helped establish a few other organizations with only partial success, but she kickstarted the Belgian feminist movement which had ripples throughout the women’s rights world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Popelin)

This photo of me is not by a monument to Marie Popelin, but rather the building where much of the “Popelin Affair” would have taken place: the Palace of Justice. In fact, there is not very much in the way of public works named after her at all. According to the internet, she has a backwater street named after her, was on a stamp for a year, was depicted on a commemorative two-euro coin, and ranked 42nd on a 2005 Flemish television poll to find the greatest Belgian of all time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Popelin) Given that commemoration is meant to retain people and their influence in the public mind, I think that Marie Popelin has been commemorated terribly.