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Elisabeth Van de Vyvere-Plasky (1865–1944), known as Elise Plasky, was the first female labour inspector in Belgium that advocated for the working-class women's emancipation and the creation of a public and free childcare system.
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Elisabeth Van de Vyvere was born in Brussels into a bourgeois family, she was the daughter of the architect Edmond Van de Vyvere. In 1883, she married the painter Eugène Plasky [fr] and had five children.
Plasky began her career writing articles for different newspapers and dedicated herself to the arts. She used the nickname "Stella". She composed poems and one-act farces and wrote one comedy (Par hasard) and one critical review (Chez nous).[1]
But from 1901, she changed her work orientation and became the first female labour inspector in Belgium for the Ministry of Industry and Labour.[2]
In 1921, and until her death in 1944, Plasky led the Labour and Social Welfare Commission of the National Council of Belgian Women (the Conseil National des Femmes Belges / Nationale Vrouwenraad van België). Also, between the two World Wars that rocked Belgium, she led the Society for the Defence and Learning of the Women's Occupations (Societé pour la défense et l'apprentissage des métiers féminins) that tried to protect works such as bobbin lace.[1]
When Plasky started in her new job as a labour inspector, it was in the context of high industralisation and with migration to the cities where the factories where located, and that also meant that child labour was normal and that school attendance was not yet compulsory.[3] For childcare, the first nursery in Belgium opened in Brussels in 1845 and other initiatives follow in Ghent in 1869.[4] Nevertheless, these first places where medical-oriented to prevent the high mortality at that time, and were not a pedagogical or family center at all. Also, most of the times they were private and charity initiatives.[4]
In 1909, Plasky published a report in which she defended the image of a complete childcare welfare system supported by the public authorities, like happened in the municipality of Liège where since 1879 childcare was fully organised and paid by the local government.[3]
