Happy International Women's Day!
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Hello dear Weven babes, today is International Women’s Day, a day that celebrates the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements of women all over the world! In celebration, we’ve written a blog post about our bags namesakes! Did you know that all of our bags are named after historical Dutch feminists? On this day we are here to celebrate strong, powerful women, past and present!
Weven was built by women for women, on the foundations of creativity, love, support, and the mission to simply do good, socially and environmentally. As a #femtrepreneur I know it’s not always easy to follow your dream and create something of your own, and that’s why it’s so important for women to support women, to empower each other to carry out our visions. We love collaborating and supporting amazing women cause we really believe that every woman’s success should be an inspiration for each other.
We are also here to remind you that supporting women owned brands is a great way to promote financial equality. Choosing carefully where you spend your money is a great way to support and celebrate women and help knock down barriers. We’re all in this together, let’s continue to spread, love, support and kindness and remember to lift each other up. ⭐️🌈
This year, the theme of International Women's Day centres on the need to build an equal future and the advancement of women in leadership positions. The issues that are being discussed today are not so distant from the issues that the three women we named our bags after were working hard to reform many years ago. Today we recognise the work of our earlier sisters and consider how far we still have to go. Pioneering women in history, inspire strong women today.
Hannie Our Hannie bag is named after Hannie Schaft (1920-1945), a true icon. A Dutch resistance fighter in WW2, also known well as ‘the girl with the red hair’. Hannie is one of the most inspirational and well-remembered figures of the Dutch resistance. Hannie always had a determined sense of justice, choosing to study law because she visioned a just world. From the beginning of the occupation and persecution of the Jews, she was always in solidarity with her Jewish friends. Her first illegal Resistance activity was to steal identity cards from public places like swimming pools and have them forged. Becoming well known for this, if asked Hannie could produce the requested details of an identity card within just hours, (she was more than good!)
Hannie went on to work closely, with the well-known resistance fighting sisters, Truus and Freddy Oversteegen, transporting illegal newspapers and weapons. The team-of-three would also lure German soldiers in, tricking them to gather information or steal their weapons. As time went on, Hannie became almost too well-known as the "girl with the red hair". Always sighted at attacks on collaborators, she had to dye her hair black and wear glasses to disguise herself. She continued attacks until she was one day caught with resistance newspapers in her bike bag, Hannie was detained and later executed.
Like many, we see strong, brave, courageous, Hannie as a hero, she stood up for the values she believed in, and she stood up for humanity. An inspirational woman to remember on a day like today. We listed at the bottom of the post where we found our information about Hannie, there is a lot out there to read about Hannie, we would recommend the book 'Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII' if you would like to learn more about this fascinating woman’s life. Corry Our Corry bag is named after, Corry Tendeloo (1897-1956), feminist, lawyer, and Member of Parliament. Corry did many admirable things in her time, but she is most well-known for fighting for the abolition of the labour ban for married civil servants in 1955.
