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Women's Suffrage in Canada

Consequences

Causes

The Outcomes for the First Wave of Feminism: What kind of progress had women made in Canadian society?

The fight for equality, securing, women's property rights, and the quest for higher education and church reform laid the foundations for women's rights

Women emerged in the public sphere and became politically active

However, the fight for equality was still far into the distance

Women had not come to identify with their free identity or had not divorced themselves from their traditional gender roles.

non-British immigrants were not included in this fight for political rights and legislation French Canadian women were severely underrepresented No voting rights for Indigenous women, as well as immigrant groups including: Japanese, Chinese, and Sikh immigrants

Men considered were the breadwinners. Breadwinner Model: Men earned in the public workforce, and women stayed in the home was the system of gender dominance

Women were on the front lines of industry and the creation of a

working class.

Maternal Feminism: Nellie McClung and the Famous Five

The Political Equality League was founded in 1912 by a number of progressive women and men.

Famous five revisted

Emily Murphy becomes first female judge in British Empire

Tight social regulation of females: The mechanization and systematization of work created more and more opportunities

for women to engage in wage labor

Politics

The First Wave of Feminism: Why are women

continuing the fight for equality and freedom?

Have women really progressed?

Public vs. Private Spheres

Historical

Canada a conservative culture Canadian society followed the social

conventions of British society who believed in the traditional gender roles for women

cook, raise a family, clean Proper and moral woman

In 1901, 53% of all Canadian females were participating in the labor force, compared to 78.3% of all males. (Royal Commission on

Labor)

Women's low education

Nellie McClung became a member of the Alberta legislature

Had no rights

McClung strongly believed that women needed the right to vote.

She felt that without the right to vote, women lacked the political agenda necessary to influence politicians and laws that would solve the problems

of both alcohol abuse and domestic abuse.

Education up to the age of 12 was considered enough for

women

The legal status of women after marriage was dismal. With no separate identity, few or no personal or economic or property rights,

Historians have struggled with: What did class awareness and discrimination even mean to women? Or did they even have an understanding of what this was?

In the latter part of the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, two main arguments were put

forward by feminists to secure greater civil and political rights, and to achieve greater influence for

Canadian women in civil society.

Were considered a minority

Property rights movement 1922

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Social Construction of Gender Roles was made to suit the man's world:

HIST 102 Prof. Anjali Malhotra

The First Wave of Feminism in Canada: Women's Suffrage

Its purpose was designed for the social and economic control of

women

Irene Parlby became the first female Cabinet minister in Alberta

McClung clearly argues her concerns in her 1915 book, In Times Like These:

[...] to bring children into the world, suffering from the handicaps caused by ignorance, poverty, or criminality of the parents, is an appalling crime against the innocent and hopeless, and yet one

about which practically nothing is said. Marriage, homemaking, and the rearing of children are left entirely to chance, and so it is no

wonder that humanity produces so many specimens who, if they were silk stockings or boots, would be marked “seconds”.

Males CONTROL the public sphere

instead on the distribution of pamphlets, petition campaigns and peaceful demonstrations.

Are gender divisions natural and unchanging?

How did women challenge these traditional gender roles in Canadian society?

Started the group of five

The league was founded in 1912 by a group of educated middle class activists which included Nellie McClung, Winona Flett (Mrs. F. J. Dixon), E. Cora Hind, and Francis Marion Beynon.

Education from working at home

Women in the work force

Women can own property

She believed that women were required in politics because of their natural maternal instincts. At a 1912 rally, Nellie McClung declared that over fifty per cent of Canada’s problems required women’s voices to help create a balance between masculine and feminine political interests

“Gender Consciousness”- an awareness of women’s political and social interests includes a wide range of activism

Women aware of gender inequalities

"Persons" does not include women

Women and children worked in the public spheres to promote the family economy

Women didn't have any political power

Women BELONG to the private domain of the home

Women lose their jobs to men when war is over

Nellie McClung: She was the most influential figure in the achievement of provincial suffrage in Manitoba in 1916, Th Person's Case: for women related to members of the armed forces and, subsequently in 1918

Race and Nation:

This was particularly important to maternal feminists, who positioned women as both the mothers and guardians of their “race.” They wrote about legislation aimed against prostitution, alcoholism and “mental defectiveness.”

Industrialization created gender awareness and

demand for social and political for reform

This fight for women's voting and suffrage was generally designed to preserve the White Race or white women. racially homogeneous was not really fight for women's equality and rights

The Age Old Problem: The Woman's Question

What was and should be “the condition of women”?

Was their familial and social subjection natural or man-made by law and tradition? Was it just?

Did women deserve an education that recognized their humanity as well as their femininity?

Did their paid labor degrade and oppress them?