Gina Ko Tremaine Soutendijk

Name(s)

Gina Ko Tremaine Soutendijk

Date and place of birth

October 25, 1996, in Singapore

Death and place of death

January 5, 2017, in Montréal, Quebec

Family

Mother: Jinhee Ko Soutendijk. She began her career in the fashion industry.

Father: Gregory Louis Soutendijk (1968-2023). His career was in international business.

Marriage and Family Life

One sibling, James Soutendijk. Unmarried; no children.

Education

Short version: Singapore American School through 2013.

Graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover in 2015.

Attended McGill University through 2017, studying economics.

Religion

Soutendijk was confirmed in the United Church of Christ but considered herself an agnostic.

Transformation(s)

Soutendijk’s family moved frequently because of her father’s career in international business, and she lived in nine locations and five countries. The women in her family had a strong influence on her life, her sense of independence, and her feminist worldview. Her mother, Jinhee Ko Soutendijk, was born in Seoul, Korea, and was orphaned as a teenager. She began work at an early age and moved to Japan to pursue a career in the fashion industry. After her marriage, Jinhee expressed her feminism through care for her family and her commitment to supporting her daughter to achieve her full potential. Soutendijk’s paternal grandmother, Mary Soutendijk, was a passionate advocate for women’s education and equality, which she expressed, in part, through her role as a Trustee at The Westover School, an all-girls boarding school in Connecticut that she had attended as a student and which she continues to support.

Soutendijk was a budding scholar, a precocious reader who had read over one thousand books before she entered high school, and an exceptional writer and researcher. She loved to ski, rowed crew at Andover, and began to play the violin at age three. As a fifteen-year-old freshman in high school, the same age at which her mother had become orphaned, Soutendijk began to express a strong interest in feminism and the unequal treatment of women, both in academia and in society at large. This focus on women’s rights persisted and was demonstrated through her ongoing passion for women’s equality and her activism on their behalf. 

Soutendijk was described by her classmates and faculty members at Phillips Andover as compassionate, caring, and wise beyond her years. She was known as an impeccable writer, a generous and inclusive mentor to younger students, an openhearted ally with a keen sense of humor, and a loyal and loving friend. During her time at Andover, she volunteered for many causes. Her values of compassion and inclusion were reflected in her actions. She joined the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, a society at Andover dedicated to creating a supportive community for LGBTQ+ students, in a gesture of solidarity for two female friends. She became a vegetarian to express her beliefs in animal rights.

Contemporaneous Network(s)

In 2014, Mary Soutendijk introduced her granddaughter to Gina Luria Walker, Professor of Women’s History at The New School, who was developing an online archive of the “female biographies” of earlier women. Soutendijk expressed her combined passions for women’s equality, research, and writing by volunteering to serve as the first Intern at The New Historia. (“TNH"). Information about earlier figures was formed through the production of individual entries for each woman that provided the newest scholarship about their works, their life trajectories, and the new knowledge they created which necessarily changes the narrative of the human past. The New Historia produces foundational information to develop research tools and content for educational curricula offering a new version of History that for the first time includes a female dimension. 

Soutendijk’s exceptional research and writing skills were first applied to amplifying work on the bibliography and citations for a new biography of Mary Hays (1759-1843). The biography documented Hays’s groundbreaking feminist work that challenged existing representations of women, her controversial life, and  the publication in 1803 of Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries, alphabetically arranged in six volumes. An American edition appeared in 1809. This was the first biographical history of women in English by a named woman and only the second since Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, in French (1508). An English edition of de Pizan’s work was printed for the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, but the printer omitted the author’s name and so Hays did not know of its existence. Female Biography gendered the traditional form of biography female, and included 302 entries for a range of women from many eras, backgrounds, classes, nationalities, beliefs, and reputations. It was the first of its kind and generated international comment, some critical because Hays incorporated rebellious and impious individuals. Female Biography was widely read. Jane Austen’s aristocratic sister-in-law was given the six volumes by her eldest son as a gift for her tenth wedding anniversary and are now included in the Chawton House Library in Alton, England, where Austen visited  her brother and his wife and is known to have written and revised her novels.

Hays continued her writing and works on behalf of women’s equality in her last book, Memoirs of Queens (1821), in which she argued that queenship provided the sole context for the unhindered exercise of female power, for female succession, and posited that queens were not only as capable of ruling as kings, but were perhaps even better rulers than men. She believed that queens were the victims of misogyny like all other women,

Hays’s belief in the ongoing and increasing participation of women in public life as a source for growth and progress was echoed by Soutendijk’s commitment to women’s rights as equal citizens, her values of empathy and justice, and her interest in the expression of women’s equality at all levels of education and society, to which she actively contributed in her role as The New Historia’s Founding Intern.

Works/Agency

Soutendijk’s work on the Mary Hays biography contributed to the publication of The Chawton House Library Edition of Female Biography, published by Pickering and Chatto, 2013, 2014, edited by Gina Luria Walker, which foregrounds Hay’s work, and includes annotations with new information about the figures by 200 international scholars.

Reputation

Soutendijk was known as a proud and loving sister, daughter, and granddaughter, an inclusive mentor to her peers, and a person who brought conscientious and creative approaches to all of her pursuits. She was a self-motivated and exemplary student who made the choice to leave the Singapore American School and successfully applied to and was accepted at Phillips Academy Andover, where she completed her secondary education. She went on to study economics at McGill University. A curious and committed thinker, she lived by her principles and expressed them through her activism on behalf of others. She is remembered as someone who lived fully, laughed freely, overcame obstacles, and was an example of compassion and loyalty in her relationships with others.

Legacy and Influence

Soutendijk’s interests in reading, writing, and research and her commitments to feminism and compassion were expressed through her volunteer efforts and her work as Founding Intern at The New Historia. They will persist through her contributions to its scholarship, as well as through the example she provided to those who knew her. Soutendijk’s grandmother, Mary Soutendijk, said that of Soutendijk’s traits, those that expressed her best were, “empathy toward those who were underprivileged, ill or handicapped, justice towards those who are discriminated against, and idealism in feminist beliefs.” 

A tree on Gelb Quad on the Phillips Academy Andover campus was dedicated in Soutendijk’s honor. 

New and Unfolding Information and/or Interpretations

The New Historia’s mission is feminist historical recovery. The New Historia website is a gathering place for new knowledge being recovered about women.  Its work is produced by a global community of scholars and other contributors who celebrate the present and past efforts of women on behalf of women and girls who are passionate about women’s rights and who are advocates for the acknowledgment of their contributions. Mary Hays is included among the featured writers, thinkers, and feminists featured on The New Historia’s site, and her biography will continue to play a foundational role in the ongoing work to help women and girls today understand the possibilities for the their own lives in a world inundated by misogyny.  

Web Resources (selected): 

The Philippian, In Memory of Gina Soutendijk, ’15 https://phillipian.net/2017/01/20/memory-Soutendijk-soutendijk-15/

The Philippian, Tree Planted in Honor of Gina Soutendijk on the Gelb Quad 

https://www.andover.edu/files/Documents/AndoverMagazineWinter2018.pdf 

Mary Hays Biography: Project Continua

https://www.projectcontinua.org/mary-hays/

Gina Soutendijk worked on this biography during her internship at The New Historia.

The New Historia

https://thenewhistoria.org/ 

A Knowledge/Education/Action Network committed to discovering and reclaiming girls and women who left evidence of their lives from preHistory to the present and who were never included in traditional History, an information system created by, for, and about mostly men. The New Historia contributes to the global project of feminist historical recovery which documents another story of the human past that is more accurate, inclusive, and optimistic.