History of women in Canada

History of Canadian women

Gwich'in mother and daughter, Fort McPherson, NT
Gender Inequality Index-2015
Value	0.098
Rank	18th
Maternal mortality (per 100,000)	7
Women in parliament	28.3%
Females over 25 with secondary education	100.0%
Women in labour force	61.0% [M: 70.3%]
Global Gender Gap Index-2016
Value	0.731
Rank	35th out of 144

The history of Canadian women covers half the population, but until recent years only comprised a tiny fraction of the historiography.

In the 1660s the French government sent about 850 young women (single or widowed) called King's Daughters ("filles du roi"). They quickly found husbands among the predominantly male settlers, as well as a new life for themselves. They came mostly from poor families in the Paris area, Normandy and the central-western regions of France. A handful were ex-prostitutes, but only one is known to have practiced that trade in Canada. As farm wives with very good nutrition and high birth rates they played a major role in establishing family life and enabling rapid demographic growth. They had about 30% more children than comparable women who remained in France. Landry says, "Canadians had an exceptional diet for their time. This was due to the natural abundance of meat, fish, and pure water; the good food conservation conditions during the winter; and an adequate wheat supply in most years."

Besides household duties, some women participated in the fur trade, the major source of cash in New France. They worked at home alongside their husbands or fathers as merchants, clerks and provisioners. Some were widowed, and took over their husbands' roles. A handful were active entrepreneurs in their own right.

In the early 19th century down to the 1950s upper-class Anglos dominated high society in Montreal, and their women constructed and managed their identity and social position through central events in the social life, such as the coming out of debutantes. The elite young women were trained in intelligent philanthropy and civic responsibility, especially through the Junior Leagues. They seldom connected with the reform impulses of the middle class women, and for and were paternalistic in their views of the needs of working-class women.

Outside the home, Canadian women had few domains which they controlled. An important exception came with Roman Catholic nuns, especially in Québec. Stimulated by the influence in France of The popular religiosity of the Counter Reformation, new orders for women began appearing in the seventeenth century. In the next three centuries women opened dozens of independent religious orders, funded in part by dowries provided by the parents of young nuns. The orders specialized in charitable works, including hospitals, orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, and schools. In the first half of the twentieth century, about 2-3% of Québec's young women became nuns; there were 6600 in 1901, and 26,000 in 1941. In Québec in 1917, 32 different teaching orders operated 586 boarding schools for girls. At that time there was no public education for girls in Québec beyond elementary school. Hospitals were another specially, the first of which was founded in 1701. In 1936, the nuns of Québec operated 150 institutions, with 30,000 beds to care for the long-term sick, the homeless, and orphans. On a smaller scale, Catholic orders of nuns operated similar institutions in other provinces.