Hilligje Kok-Bisschop (born 1948) is a dutch activist from

Staphorst Staphorst () is a municipality and a town in the eastern Netherlands. History The villages of Staphorst and its southern neighbour Rouveen came into existence as in the 13th century monks started to bring the bogs and swamps into culture. All ...

for emancipation of orthodox Christian women. On 26 April 2013 she received the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau ( nl, Orde van Oranje-Nassau, links=no) is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has ...

for her work advocating the rights of women in the Dutch orthodox Christian community. She had previously been shunned from her local church for lobbying in The Hague for female representation in the Christian party SGP. She received the award thanks to a documentary made about her by the Dutch filmmaker Emile van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, who himself was awarded the same order on 24 April 2015, mostly for his documentaries based on her work. His first documentary about her, 'Staphorst in tegenlicht', aired in 2007. In 2014 she was asked to share her favorite texts on the Dutch TV program 'Het Vermoeden', a program dedicated to interviews by Annemiek Schrijver with various figures about their favorite holy texts. She said her motto was a line by Dutch poet M. Vasalis 'Niet het snijden doet zo’n pijn, maar het afgesneden zijn.' (''it is not the cutting off that is painful, but being cut off''). Her favorite holy text is Psalm 3, verse 3: ''I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.''

Documentaries

* 'Staphorst in tegenlicht', 2007 * 'Houdt God van vrouwen?', 2013Houdt God van Vrouwen?
on NPO website

References

*Order of Orange-Nassau list of awards 1948 births Living people Dutch feminists Members of the Order of Orange-Nassau {{Activist-stub