In the southern Low Countries, the Chambers of Rhetoric (Rederijkerskamers), exclusively male literary societies, dominated literary life. This does not alter the fact that there is also evidence that many women, often on the fringes of the Chambers of Rhetoric, were involved in writing, but only a few of their texts have been preserved. Anna Bijns and Barbara Ogier saw their works appear in print, because they both excelled in typical rhetorician’s genres, although officially they could not be members of rhetoricians’ chambers. Bijns’s militant poems against Luther were gratefully used as a means of propaganda in religious disputes. At the end of the seventeenth century, Ogier regularly had to uphold the honor of the Antwerp Chamber of Rhetoric and the Guild of Saint Luke with occasional plays that served to welcome high-ranking persons. For women religious, the situation was somewhat different. The Beguines in particular had a great deal of autonomy, and they wrote sacred texts, especially songs, for their own use while at work and in their schools, which could be presented to a wider audience. Other women religious wrote songs in which they often incorporated mystical experiences as well as very accessible Christmas carols. Some nuns, whose strict way of life set an example of holiness to the members of their order, were urged by their spiritual directors to write testimonies of their way of life. Some of these often highly personal autobiographical texts were published after their death.