Holy crap, Dystopian, I had no idea Holland had such an impressive list!
There's no doubt more. I left out a bunch of from the WW2 resistance for instance. I also left out a LOT of other women dressing as a man in order to become soldiers; it was apparently pretty common!
I also left out dutch women who were suspected of (or actually were) spies, like the famous Mata Hari, or Beatrice Terwindt: who was a stewardess on the last KLM flight to/from Berlin before the outbreak of WW2, was then trained by MI-9, dropped into occupied Holland via parachute in '43 to set up a new escape route for crashed English pilots only to be captured by Germans who'd sent disinformation to the English spies and knew she was coming. She was tortured and interrogated for three days without saying anything, and after being imprisoned for 15 months was transferred to a concentration camp, but survived the war and died in '87.
I probably also shouldn't have forgotten our most famous queen; Queen Wilhelmina was a strong-willed woman who didn't really act the way was expected of either a woman or a queen in those days. She tended to act on her own while completely disregarding the politicians who had the real power. One story goes that on a visit to Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, he told her "my guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them." Wilhelmina smiled politely and replied, "Quite true, Your Majesty, your guards are seven feet tall. But when we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep!" She'd frequently inspect the troops while on horseback during WW1, without warning. And at the onset of WW2, considered the politicians who tried to stay friendly with Germany as a bunch of idiots; and was a huge moral asset for the resistance, which she was heavily involved with.
Or Jacoba van Beieren, Countess of Holland and Zeeland in the early 15th century, who inherited the lands since she was the only child. Due to political intrigue surrounding a civil war, she lost her lands to her 2nd husband; who she then left in search for a new husband who could help her get her lands back. Together with her third husband, she repeatedly tried to reconquer her lands, but her new husband eloped with one of her courtiers. The former husband who'd stolen her lands from her was poisoned by the English in support of Jacoba; but now she was facing the much more powerful Burgundian armies of Philip the Good, against whom she waged a guerilla war until eventually being forced to sign a peace.
or Anna Maria van Schurman, German-born Dutch painter, humanist, insectologist, linguist, theologian, poet, engraver, scholar, and early feminist. She was the first woman (at least in the Netherlands, don't know about elsewhere) who was allowed to go to college (in 1636, albeit behind closed doors so the male students wouldn't see her); she wrote her first work in 1638; Dissertatio de ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam & meliores litteras aptitudine; in which she defended the view that the women who had both the time and capacity to study, should do so. The first known use of pastels in Dutch paintings is attributed to her, and she became quite famous in international learned circles. She was proficient in 14 languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic, and Ethiopian.
Or Aletta Jacobs, born in 1854; would become the first female doctor in the Netherlands, was the first (officially recognized) student at university/college. Spoke five languages, founded a free clinic in 1880 for poor women and children, and would provide birth control to the women who came there, thus making it the first birth control clinic in the country. She became technically eligible to vote in 1883 because the law specified that people above a certain paygrade were allowed to vote, which she passed on account of being a doctor, but it was ruled that it was not in the spirit of the law to let women vote, forcing the law to be changed to specify 'male citizen'; which would eventually be overturned in large part due to her efforts as the head of the first feminist wave in the country.
Or... I could go on.
