Sterke vrouwen! De institutionele positie van de eerste Afrikaanse schrijfsters

In the early 1990s several Afrikaans literary scholars suggested that the work of the first Afrikaans women writers had been marginalised, because it supposedly went against the hegemonic Afrikaner-nationalist discourse. Since then research in the field of social history has indicated that during the first half of the 20th century, Afrikaner women were not as powerless as has often been assumed. In this article, the biographical details of women writers from 1902-1930 are provided, with special reference to their involvement in Afrikaans women's organisations. The short story "Prente"("Pictures") by Mabel Jansen is used to illustrate the interrelatedness of literature and social work within the framework of this type of organisations. In the concluding paragraph an attempt is made to explain the marginalisation of these women writers' work from an international perspective, with special reference to the interference between the Dutch and the Afrikaans literary systems.