Senator Gaby Perin-Gopie: ‘I kept thinking: what is that? Until I realized: oh, I’m brown’

Dutch Senator Gaby Perin-Gopie describes politics as an "unpleasant environment," one she feels is "designed for white men with a lot of life experience." As the faction leader for Volt in the First Chamber, she has begun documenting the challenges faced by those who don't fit this mold, particularly younger women of color.

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Politics is an unpleasant environment. It is designed for white men with a lot of life experience.

Perin-Gopie, who grew up in a single-parent household with limited financial means and has a "low socio-economic status" and "this skin color," feels she landed among the "supposedly fortunate." She aimed to bridge this gap but finds it persists, citing numerous examples. While she intentionally avoids naming specific men to focus on systemic issues, she shares how she has been treated with racism and sexism.

She recounts her childhood, growing up with her two sisters and white mother after her parents' divorce. Her father, a Surinamese-Hindustani Dutchman, is not in her life. Her mother was on welfare, and money was scarce. Weekly grocery trips with her grandfather, Albert Veldhuis, involved him discreetly paying for essential items from their cart. "Dude, I can see this, right?" she once exclaimed, a moment that led her to stop wearing dresses in the First Chamber.

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I grew up in a single-parent family, in poverty, with a low socio-economic status and this skin color, and ended up among the supposedly fortunate.

Perin-Gopie didn't perceive herself as an outsider as a child. She attended a conservative Catholic school where she was excluded from communion due to her parents' divorce and lack of baptism. She recalls sitting in the back pew during services with other "brown children" whose parents were from Curaçao and Suriname. At the time, she didn't connect this to skin color, a realization that came much later. This understanding solidified when she worked at the UWV in The Hague in 2009, helping unemployed youth find jobs during the banking crisis.

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Dude, I can see this, right?