Petals and Power: A Dutch Mother’s Domain

This morning, I listened to a fellow columnist narrate her piece about waking up to financial vulnerability – that dreaded moment when the ceiling stares back at you while an elephant sits on your chest, mocking your economic dependence.
She railed against the seeming failure of 1970s feminism, lamenting that Dutch women still find themselves in such precarious positions today.

Her words transported me to a different 1970s Netherlands – not to the well-documented urban feminist movements or the “Krakers” hurling stones at police in Amsterdam’s gentrifying centre, but to the quiet reality in my childhood village’s kitchens.

There, among the corn and wheat fields, I witnessed a different kind of female power.
While Amsterdam’s canals transformed into posh paradise (oh, those V.O.C. pirates would be proud), village women wielded authority through flower money.
Their husbands might have brought home the blooms, but the wives managed the proceeds. These women, technically “housewives,” were the undisputed financial directors of their domains.
For all their conductor-like poses, the fathers knew where actual authority resided – in the kitchen, where everyone, young and old, went to seek permission and counsel.

These women never marched with feminist banners or occupied buildings. They didn’t need to.
Their power flowed through the quiet channels of domestic economics, wearing responsibility and stoicism like well-fitted gloves.
Life was “good” then – not because it was perfect, but because “good” encompassed values beyond the visible markers of liberation.

Yesterday, while shopping, I witnessed something that made me pause. A young man’s hunted glance quickly diverted when an older, sun-tanned man approached. Ten minutes later, the scene had changed: the older men chatting to one alike, the younger one waiting quietly.
It struck me—I never saw that trapped look in the eyes of those village mothers.
Their roles might have been prescribed, but they wielded their scepters like modern-day Cleopatras within those boundaries.

“Finance is a gun, and politics is when to pull the trigger,” goes the saying. But perhaps we’ve been looking down the wrong barrel.
While urban feminism fought visible battles, rural women had already established their own economic strongholds.
Today’s concerns about financial independence reveal less about the failure of 1970s feminism and more about how we’ve narrowed our definition of power to match an urban, individualistic template.

The real question isn’t whether feminism failed but whether we’ve forgotten to recognize power in its many currencies—some of which cannot be deposited in a bank.
After all, as the village mothers knew so well, a home without a mother is just a house.

May harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. Never trust a man with a fake sun tan!