Women in Canada Exam

Voice of Women

Who: Canadian women activists, including Lotta Dempsey

What: Anti-Nuclear peace organization

When/Where: 1960, Toronto/Canda

Why: Fear nuclear fallout would harm children and future generations

Example: The baby tooth survey, collected children’s teeth to prove radiation exposure

Significance: Shows how women used maternal identity as political authority, expanding women’s activism beyond the home while still “respectable” in Cold War Culture

Human Rights Legislation

Who: Governments, activists

What: Laws banning discrimination (race, religion, sex)

When/Where: 1940s-60s, Canada

Why: Reaction to WWII racism and the holocaust

Example: Provinces banning discrimination in housing and employment

Significance: Marked a shift from legalized inequality to formal equality, but gaps between law and practice reveal limits of liberal reform

First Nations voting rights

Who: first nations peoples

What: Right to vote federally without losing status

When/Where: 1960, Canada

Why: Indigenous activism + pressure for equal citizenship

Example: Earlier, voting required giving up “Indian Status (enfranchisement)

Significance: Expanded rights, but highlights colonial contradiction – political inclusion without full sovereignty

First Nations Homemakers’ Clubs

Who: Indigenous women + Dept of Indian Affairs

What: Clubs teaching domestic skills

When/Where: 1950s, reserves

Why: Assimilation into Euro-Canadian gender norms

Example: Teaching sewing, cooking, and “proper” homemaking

Significance: Intended as control, but often became spaces for Indigenous women’s community leadership and resistance

Bridge Leaders

Who: Often Black women activists

What: Mediators between communities and political institutions

When/Where: 1940s-60s, Canada

Why: Needed non-confrontational strategies in racist society

Example: Women organizing through churches and study clubs rather than protests

Significance: Demonstrates how respectability politics enabled gradual civil rights gains

Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations (FWTAO)

Who: Women teachers

What: Professional association/union

When/Where: Post-1944, Ontario

Why: Fight low wages and gender inequality

Example: Collective bargaining for better pay and working conditions

Significance: Shows how women used unions to gain economic power within a gender-segregated workforce

Nursing and the ‘race bar’

Who: Black and Indigenous women

What: Exclusion from nursing education from post-secondary institutions and nursing programs

When/Where: Pre-1950s, Canada

Why: Systemic racism in professional training

Example: Women like Pearleen Oliver lobbying to admit Black nurses

Significance: Reveals how race structured access to “respectable” female professions, sparking early civil rights activism

Indian Placement and Relocation Program

Who: First Nations individuals

What: Government relocation for job training

When/Where: 1957-70s, Canada

Why: Assimilation into urban labour market

Example: Women trained as secretaries/hairdressers, forced to leave reserves

Significance: Demonstrates shift from overt control (residential schools) to economic assimilation, often producing isolation and racism

‘Emasculation’ (postwar)

Who: men

What: Fear of losing masculinity

When/where: 1945-60s, North America

Why: Women working + rise of office jobs

Example: Anxiety that men in desk jobs were becoming ‘feminized’

Significance: Reinforced breadwinner ideal, used to justify limiting women’s independence

Equal pay for Equal Work

Who: Women activists

What: Equal wages for identical jobs

When/Where: 1950s-70s, Canada

Why: Women earned ~50-60% of men’s wages

Example: Ontario’s Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act (1951)

Significance: Important reform, but narrow – ignored broader inequality – led to later demand for ”equal pay for work of equal value”

Displaced persons

Who: WWII refugees

What: People forced from homes

When/Where: Late 1940s, Europe to Canada

Why: War, Holocaust, Soviet Expansions

Example: Eastern Europeans brought for labour contracts

Significance: Shows immigrations shaped by labour needs + racial preferences, not just humanitarianism

West Indian Domestic Scheme

Who: Caribbean women

What: Immigration program for domestic labour

When/Where: From 1955, Canada

Why: Labour shortages in domestic work

Example: Women required to work as live-in maids before gaining status

Significance: Highlights intersection of race, gender, and labour exploitation

Reception Work

Who: Women workers

What: Clerical/front desk jobs

When/Where: Postwar urban economy

Why: Growth of corporate offices

Examples: Secretaries, typists, receptionists

Significance: Created “pink-collar” sector– stable but low-paid and limited mobility

Kinsey Report

Who: Alfred Kinsey, sexologist

What: Groundbreaking scientific studies on human sexual behaviour (Sexual Behaviour in the Human male 1948; Female 1953)

When/Where: 1948 & 1953, US and influential in Canada

Why: Scientific study of sexuality, empirically rather than morally

Example: Found many people had same-sex experiences

Significance: Undermined idea of strict “normal vs deviant,” influencing early LGBTQ activism, challenged the idea of fixed ‘normal’ sexuality

Butch-Femme Bar Culture

Who: Working-class lesbian communities

What: Gendered roles (butch = masculine, femme = feminine)

When/Where: 1940s-60s, urban North America, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver

Why: To create identity and navigate hostile public spaces

Example: Butch women often took protective roles in bars & relationship dynamics, wearing masculine clothing like suits, femmes in dresses – creating recognizable social codes

Significance: Created visible lesbian identities and community under conditions of repression, often misunderstood as copying heterosexual norms, but argued it was a strategy of survival and resistance, marginalized groups create culture under repression

Heterosexual ‘Maturity’

Who: Psychologists, Cold War Society

What: Idea that adulthood required heterosexuality

When/Where: 1950s-60s, North America

Why: Emphasis on stable nuclear families, linked to cold war fears

Example: Homosexuality labelled as a mental illness in early DSM, Freud-influenced ideas about “arrested development”

Significance: Made heterosexuality not just normal, but a requirement for psychological health and citizenship. Justified discrimination as “science” not prejudice. Reinforced surveillance of sexuality (fruit machine)

Lesbian Pulp Fiction

Who: Publishers and authors producing mass-market paperbacks

What: Cheap novels depicting lesbian relationships, often sensationalized

When/Where: 1950s/60s, North America

Why: Commercial demand for taboo or “forbidden” topics

Example: Stories where lesbian relationships end tragically (death, insanity, or return to heterosexuality)

Significance: Reinforced stereotypes of lesbians as dangerous or deviant, BUT gave readers access to knowledge and recognition of same sex desire. Functioned as a “hidden cirriculum” – people learned where to go, how to identify others. Both policed and enabled queer identity

Homophile Organizations

Who: Early LGBTQ activists

What: Organizations advocating for acceptance and legal reform

Where/When: 1950s-60s, North America

Why: Combat criminalization and stigma in a hostile cold war environment

Example: Association for social knowledge promoting education and respectability

Significance: Focused on proving homosexuals were “normal",” respectable citizens. Used cautious, non-confrontational strategies (contrast with later radical movements). Helped pave the way for decriminalization (e.g., 1969 reforms in Canada). Demonstrates limits of activism under repression – change through assimilation vs transformation

Sexual Revolution

Who: Youth, feminists, LGBTQ activists

What: Broad cultural shift toward more open attitudes about sex

When/Where: 1960s-70s, Western world

Why: Influenced by birth control (the pill), counterculture, and challenges to authority

Examples: Increased acceptance of premarital sex, public discussion of sexuality, changing gender norms

Significance: Broke down strict sexual norms of the 1950s. Enabled movements or women’s liberation and gay rights. However, benefits were uneven – often centred white, middle-class experiences. Marks a transition from sexual containment – sexual expression

Social Feminism

Who: Feminist theorists and activists

What: A branch of feminism linking women’s oppression to both patriarchy and capitalism

When/Where: Late 1960s-70s

Why: Liberal feminism (legal equality) seen as insufficient

Example: Critiques of unpaid domestic labour as essential to capitalist economies

Significance: Argued that women’s inequality is rooted in economic structures, not just discrimination. Expanded feminism to labour, class, and exploitation. Influenced debates on wages, childcare, and social policy

Sisterhood is powerful

Who: Popularized by Robin Morgan

What: A slogan emphasizing unity among women

When/Where: Late 1960s, early 70s

Why: Build collective feminist identity and solidarity

Examples: Consciousness-rising groups where women shared personal experiences

Significance: reinforced idea that “the personal is political,” Helped mobilize large numbers of women, later critiqued for ignoring differences (race, class, sexuality), leading to more inclusive feminism

Lesbian Feminism

Who: Lesbian activists within the feminist movement

What: Movement linking women’s oppression to compulsory heterosexuality

When/Where: 1970s

Why: Frustration with sexism in gay movements and heteronormativity in feminism

Example: Argument that heterosexuality is socially enforced, not purely natural

Significance: Positioned sexuality as a political system, not just personal identity. Challenged both patriarchy and mainstream views. Expanded feminist theory to include sexual power dynamics

Anti-racist feminism

Who: Women of colour

What: Feminist approach addressing both racism and sexism

When/Where: 1970s onward

Why: Mainstream feminism centred white, middle-class women

Example: Black women highlighting workplace discrimination different from white women’s experiences

Significance: introduced what we now call intersectionality, showed that oppression is multiple and interconnected, not single-issue. Critiqued the limits of universal sisterhood

Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC)

Who: Indigenous women leaders

What: National advocacy organization

Where/When: Founded 1974, Canada

Why: Address discrimination in Canadian law and within Indigenous governance

Example: Challenging Indian Act rules that stripped women of status if they married non-Indigenous men

Significance: Central in asserting Indigenous women’s rights and sovereignty. Highlights intersection of colonialism, gender, and law

Therapeutic Abortion Committees

Who: Hospital committees of doctors

What: Panels deciding if abortions were medically necessary

Where/When: After 1969 law reform, Canada

Why: Government sought controlled legalization

Example: Women needing approval from multiple doctors– often denied, especially in rural areas

Significance: Unequal access based on class, location, and connections. Sparked feminist activism demanding full reproductive rights, shows how the state attempted to control women’s bodies even while liberalizing laws