HIST 225 assignment 2

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History

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May 24, 2024

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1 How the Position of Women Changed in Canadian Society Between 1900 and 1960 Chaiwon Lee History 225: History of Canada 1867 to the Present April 05, 2024

2 Canadian women struggled with the traditional norms set in place, the social norms, and the systematic barriers that standardized their domestic role in society. The history of Canadian women being placed into the roles of wives, mothers, caregivers, and men's support set a strong domestic traditional hold on women. With prevailing attitudes and legal structures, it had created an environment that limited the opportunities for women to gain education, employment, and political participation. The confluence of socio-economic, political, and cultural forces drove the changes and transformations in women’s roles in Canadian society. With the rise of feminist movements and the changes/shifts caused by the two World Wars, Canadian women found themselves powering through to fight the gender battle where they challenged the traditional norms. This essay analyzes the challenges and changes involved with the evolution of women’s roles in Canadian society between 1900 and 1960, including the impacts of the intersection of gender, class, race, etc. With further analysis of the important historical events and developments and the factors that formed the experience and life of a woman in Canada, this essay sheds light on the struggles and ongoing fight for equality. In the pre-World War I era (1900-1914), there was a strong hold on traditional gender norms and societal expectations for women’s roles. At the time, people believed women’s house duties were done by pure nurturing and maternal instinct, which proved her expression of love for her family. 1 Women’s domestic labour was taken for granted as it was an expectation that it was an innate nature for women to want to and should do the work required to maintain a family and household to the best of their ability. Thus, when women discussed the feelings of underappreciation, they were met with scrutiny and hostility that a woman was denying the 1 Arlene Kaplan, Daniels. “Invisible Work.” Social Problems 34, no. 5 (1987), 407, doi:10.2307/800538.

3 obviousness of her role. The entrenchment of this belief that women were to remain home to raise the family and prepare a place of respite for the working man deepened the belief that men were doing real productive work. In contrast, women’s work was non-productive and meant to support and rehabilitate “real workers”. 2 Due to the unappreciation surrounding women’s housework, it was common for the childcare activities to be glossed over as “unreal work”. Although women were excluded from a large part of the labour market, there were still spaces that women occupied as there were expectations for daughters to be dutiful and provide for their families. These spaces usually would be work closely related to the household's piecework. Since female labour was not considered highly, the pay for women participating in the labour market was considerably low. This normalized standard didn’t stop women from fighting and not settling with the “unfair labour practices in trades they dominated”. 3 However, this right was reserved for white women, for women of colour this choice to protest was nonexistent. Right off the bat, the treatment of Canadian daughters to immigrants was vastly different. Although white women were underappreciated, women of colour would find themselves in even more powerless situations where “their racialization permanently diminished the value of their labour”. 4 For families of colour, had no choice but to have both parents working to keep afloat, and women of colour were given very limited choices in the labour market. They were already in desperate and vulnerable positions in the hiring market, and employers would take advantage of this and use that power to underpay and give horrible living conditions to immigrants. 5 Overall, the Pre- World War I times showed the deep entrapment of women being fixed into a domestic role, but it 2 Daniels, 404. 3 Margaret Conrad, Alvin Finkel, and Donald Fyson, History of the Canadian Peoples: Volume 2: 1867 to the Present , 7th ed. (Toronto: Pearson Education, 2019), 79. 4 Carmela Patrias, "More Menial than Housemaids? Racialized and Gendered Labour in the Fruit and Vegetable Industry of Canada’s Niagara Region, 1880–1945," Labour Le Travail , no. 78 (2016), 88. 5 Patrias, 91.

4 also displayed how much further below women of colour were placed. During this time, the female suffrage movement was not gaining much traction and had been denied as female societal roles were deeply ingrained as domestic and unimportant. 6 World War I and the Interwar Period (1914-1939) had impacted women’s roles in Canadian society. Oddly, due to a treacherous event such as war, women could step into spaces that men usually only occupy. Due to the Great War, more than 600,000 Canadians were enlisted in military service with the exception that only men were allowed to fight during the war. 7 This led to a large gap in the spaces that men would occupy back at home and spaces that now needed to be filled. The war ended up functioning as a force that helped women to be liberated, to step foot into spaces that were not allowed before, and to uplift them into different social roles for the time being. Women started to work in transportation and metal trades that were previously exclusive to men, and women could also now work at “untraditional” jobs such as munition factories. This allowed for more than 30,000 (mostly single women) to work at these said munition factories temporarily due to the necessity, but still found themselves being underpaid. 8 Furthermore, in cases such as fighting in the war, women were barred from participating in the combat as they were considered “too weak and emotional to stand the rigours of battle”. 9 Although the war affected all Canadians, it was clear, that the war was a White Man’s War, a war that excluded women and different racialized groups. Women were only allowed as nurses because the role of a supporter and server to a man was still deemed acceptable and valid in the war. 10 However, the nature of the job was harsh, scary, and life-risking, despite the idea that this was the only woman’s role that was allowed. Through the war efforts women put in, they gained 6 Conrad, Finkel, and Fyson, 113. 7 Conrad, Finkel, and Fyson, 129. 8 Conrad, Finkel, and Fyson, 132. 9 Conrad, Finkel, and Fyson, 141. 10 Conrad, Finkel, and Fyson, 141.

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