Women's rights in Canada

The history of feminism in Canada has been a gradual struggle aimed at establishing equal rights. The history of Canadian feminism, like modern, Western feminism in other countries has been divided by scholars into three "waves", each describing a period of intense activism and social change. The use of “waves,” has been critiqued for its failure to include feminist activism of, for example, Aboriginal and Québécois women who organized for changes in their own communities as well as for larger social change.

The first wave of feminism in Canada occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This early activism was focused on increasing women’s role in public life, with goals including women’s suffrage, increased property rights, increased access to education, and recognition as “persons” under the law. This early iteration of Canadian feminism was largely based in maternal feminism; the idea that women are natural caregivers and “mothers of the nation” who should participate in public life because of their perceived propensity for decisions that will result in good care of society. In this view, women were seen to be a civilizing force on society – which was a significant part of women’s engagement in missionary work and in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

The first wave in Canada was different in Québec. Although the first wave was developed at an earlier time, many women in Québec had to wait until April 1940 for their right to vote and run in elections. In addition to their significance in society, women had taken over many of the missing roles of men while they were off at war. Women worked in factories and took over farms and proved their importance in society.

Religion was an important factor in the early stages of the Canadian women’s movement. Some of the earliest groups of organized women came together for a religious purpose. When women were rejected as missionaries by their Churches and missionary societies, they started their own missionary societies and raised funds to send female missionaries abroad. Some of them raised enough to train some of their missionaries as teachers or doctors.

The first of these missionary societies was founded in Canso, Nova Scotia in 1870 by a group of Baptist women inspired by Hannah Norris, a teacher who wanted to be a missionary. Norris asked the women in her Church for help when her application to the Baptist Foreign Mission Board was rejected. The formed their own missionary society, and soon there were Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican women missionary societies forming across the western provinces, Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes. These new societies not only enabled women to work as missionaries, they also gave women the opportunity to manage the funding, training and employment of female missionaries in foreign countries.

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