Sylvia's Journal

Our group of women were about the last from a period when the men’s and the women’s clubs had separate existences, separate buildings and separate governance bodies before the two clubs merged in the early seventies. My sister who completed her studies in Leiden before the merger, was never part of the new ‘mixed’ club that was named Minerva.  Only the women who joined after the merger were invited. As a result we were a tiny minority standing out in our colored clothes amidst a sea of dark suits.

The women’s building that we inhabited before the merger was an elegant house on Leiden’s main canal – but it was clear the men could not move in with us. And so we ended up moving into the men’s building, a large, hideous and indestructible building, reeking of beer (and cigars in the olden days) on the main drag of Leiden.

We had decided to enter the large room together, there is force in numbers. At the coat check some older men looked at us with, what I assumed to be a question mark on their head (‘what are these women doing here?’) or made awkward jokes about ‘shouldn’t we have separate places for men’s and women’s coats?”

We had agreed to join the men for the cocktail hour. After all some of the men from our year (or just above) were no strangers; we had studied together, we were related (like me),  some had husbands, ex husbands or boyfriends in that group, or we had served together on committees. After the noise levels had deafened us enough and our voices became raw from trying to get ourselves heard over the din, we left to dine together in the intimacy of a small elegant restaurant in town – the opposite in all aspects of where the men were congregating. It was a most exquisite restaurant (‘Puur’) which I promptly gave a five star review on Tripadvisor.