Five extraordinary Belgian women whose legacy lives on

It was Lenin who originally declared the first International Women’s Day on 8 March in 1922 as a tribute to the role of women in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Since then, the day has evolved to celebrate their social, economic and political achievements, while calling for the emancipation of girls and women worldwide.

To mark the occasion, The Bulletin honours five Belgian women from different walks of life who left their mark on history and culture in the country and beyond.

ART - Anna Boch

Artist Anna Boch (1848-1936) was famously progressive for her time, owning a car and travelling frequently, often alone. Born into an affluent background, her family owned the Manufacture Boch Frères Keramis ceramics mecca in La Louvière. It was her cousin Octave Maus who founded the impressionist artists’ group Les XX, and she was the only woman allowed to join. An accomplished violinist and pianist, Boch’s beautiful impressionist and pointillist scenes of the French coast like The Cliffs at Sanary or Shores of Brittany rivalled her more famous male counterparts. She also collected art, amassing paintings by Gauguin and Signac, as well as displaying an eye for emerging talent by acquiring work by the then unknown van Gogh, who was a friend of her brother Eugène. Ostend was a favourite place; its famous artist James Ensor was a close friend and she acquired his acclaimed La Musique Russe.

SCIENCE - Hélène Mallebrancke

Hélène Mallebrancke (1902-1940) was the country’s first female civil engineer to graduate from the University of Ghent in 1924, at a time when female presence in higher education was rare. In 1926, she joined Belgium’s public telephone service, becoming, by May 1940, chief engineer in charge of the Ghent region. During the Belgian invasion, although seriously ill, she worked day and night to keep telecommunications operating to support the Allies. Exhausted, she was admitted to hospital, but died at just 38. Learning of her death, Charles Huntziger, the then minister of war in the French Government of Vichy, sent Mallebrancke’s mother the Croix de Guerre - the Belgian Croix de Guerre followed in 1946. He wrote that she had played “a leading role in establishing command links for the Allies,” and was “a remarkable example of professional conscience and composure”. In 2020, the Mallebranckestraat was named in her honour at Oostakker, near Ghent.

FILM - Chantal Akerman

Peeling potatoes may not seem like a scene for great cinema. But pioneering modern feminist filmmaker, Brussels-born Chantal Akerman (1950-2015), made this moment mesmerising, memorable and a symbol of domestic drudgery in Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In 2022, it topped the British Film Institute Sight and Sound’s greatest all-time film poll, the first time in 70 years that such an accolade was awarded to a female director. As a radical feminist and lesbian, Akerman explored sexual identity and the place of women in society throughout her career, which extended to fiction documentaries, videos and installation art. She was the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, and her work often featured Jewish and Holocaust themes, including Walking Next to One’s Shoelaces into an Empty Fridge. A real nomad, working in Europe, the US, Israel, Mexico and China, Ackerman, who suffered from depression, died from suicide in Paris.

SPORT - Hélène Dutrieu

Not content with simply cycling, winning numerous awards including the women’s world record for distance cycled in one hour, this Tournaisienne (1877-1961) even invented her own cycling stunt, ‘The Human Arrow’ 15-metre jump. Moving on to motorbike stunts, Hélène Dutrieu then had a varied stage career in Paris, before returning to sport and learning to fly in a monoplane. On 25 November 1910, she became the fourth woman in the world and the first Belgian to receive a pilot’s licence, two months after thrilling the world with a non-stop Ostend to Bruges flight. Fashion-conscious Dutrieu wore the first known ‘high fashion’ pilot suit and was dubbed ‘The Girl Hawk’ due to myriad air show appearances. She caused a scandal when telling the press she did not wear a corset when flying. In World War One, she worked as an ambulance driver and directed a military hospital, and after the war, she became a journalist. In 1956, this woman of many talents created the Hélène Dutrieu-Mortier Cup that carried a 200,000 Belgian franc prize for the French or Belgian female pilot making the longest non-stop flight a year. Immortalised by a giant effigy at Tournai’s Maison de la Marionnette museum, Dutrieu’s tributes include a 2011 euro commemorative coin and a 2024 Brussels street.

LITERATURE - Monique Martin

Most children growing up in Belgium from the late 20th century will be familiar with the charming Ernest and Célestine books, the basis for a César award-winning 2012 film and TV series spin off, by author and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent. This was the nom de plume for Monique Martin, derived from the first names of her grandparents. Much more than simple tales about the daily life of a large bear with a kind heart and a little mouse with a fiery character, her stories address themes of friendship, loss, tolerance, poverty, migration or just – and this coming long before the environmental movement kicked off – the need to recycle waste. Martin (1928-2000), born in Place du Châtelain, Ixelles, used her much-loved home town, including the Châtelain and Marolles markets, in her albums. A keen traveller to countries such as Africa and Japan, her works include desert scenes, Jacques Brel portraits and a Palais de Justice series. But she will always be remembered for creating joyous moments like Célestine’s attempts to make tisanes for a sick Ernest, leaving the kitchen in chaos.

Read about five other notable Belgian women in this article published by The Bulletin for International Women’s Day in 2021.

Photos: Chantal Aakerman ©Jean-michel Vlaeminckx cinergie; Anna Boch Wikipedia Commons; Hélène Mallebrancke Wikipedia Commons; Hélène Dutrieu Wikipedia Commons: Bain New Service United States Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs division; Fondation Monique Martin - Gabrielle Vincent