Work Opportunities for Women during WW ll in Canada

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that at the start of World War ll women were denied entry to positions in the workforce that were previously thought of as reserved only for men. Thus, the earning capacity of women was considerably lower than that of men and they were unable to accede to positions of economic or political power as well. The paper continues by highlighting that, as a result of the male task force being involved in fighting a war, vacancies in the work situation became available to Canadian women and thus it became apparent that women proved to be as efficient as men in a previous male-dominated areas. Encouraged by capitalism and the ruling powers and the press, Canadian women were now holding major positions which the government attempted unsuccessfully to reverse after the war. The paper concludes that WWI helped women realize their capabilities and achieve equality with their male counterparts.

From the Paper:

"In this analysis, it is important to bear in mind that women in Canada have always worked, in one way or another. Feminist scholars such as Bradbury have eloquently dismissed the myth that dual-income families are a new phenomenon, a product of the women's movement in the last few decades. In her analysis of working class families in the period from the 1860s to the 1890s - the time of the industrial revolution in Canada - Bradbury shows that even in that time, married Canadian women were actively involved in a broad range of income-generating activities, such as taking in boarders. At the same time, they were also expected to handle all domestic labour. Bradbury reproduces a cartoon showing a woman on her knees, doing the washing, while her husband eats dinner. The caption reads: "You complain, my poor husband, or your ten hours of labour. Yet I have been working for fourteen hours, and I have not yet finished my day." Bradbury also makes the point that women's labour was essential, and that if most families had relied on the husband's earnings alone, "poverty, even starvation, would have been chronic." Moreover, men would not have had the strength to labour at the factories for ten hours, and women would not have been well enough nourished to produce viable babies. In short, the "working class could not have reproduced itself."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bradbury, Bettina. Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1993.
• Hill, Irene. "Female Suffrage." The Encyclopedia of Canada. Ed. W. Stewart Wallace. Vol. II. Toronto: University Associates in Canada, 1948: 325-7
• Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
• Honey, Maureen. "Remembering Rosie: Advertising Images of Women in World War II." The Home-Front: War World War II and American Society. Ed. Kenneth Paul O'Brien and Lynn Hudson Parsons. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. 83-101.
• Leader-Post, Regina. Advert. 5 December, 1942. Retrieved from http://www.citizenship.gov.on.ca/owd/english/history_month/studyunits_5.htm

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