Women in Alberta: A brief historical journey,1890 to 2004, by Phyllis Ellis

In the early 1900s, the average lifespan for women was 47 years. Hard work, difficult living conditions, too many children, lack of education and health facilities, all took their toll. Today women are hale and hearty into their 80s and 90s and to reach the age of 100 is no longer a rarity.


Let us trace the evolution of women’s rights with a brief overview.


In the beginning women and children were the property of the husband. Men could leave their wives destitute and keep the children or leave them behind - as he pleased. Citizens realized this was an unacceptable situation and with their urging The Dower Act, which entitled the wife to the family home(stead) became law in May 1917.


The right to education was a hard-fought battle for women. In 1890, in his book Sex in Education or A Fair Chance for the Girls, Dr. Edward Clark wrote that higher education would cause women’s uteruses to atrophy and was believed to alienate a woman from her instincts. This and other similar ideas were used to argue against the need for women to attend university.


When Dr. Emily Stowe became the first woman to graduate from a Canadian medical college she had had to endure overwhelming indignities. When other women followed her into university they were required to enter the classroom after all the male students were in place, sit in the back out of sight, and leave class five minutes early. In spite of these restrictions they did graduate and opened the door for more women to study.


At our own U of A, in the 1924-25 class, Dr. Leona Claire McGregor was the first woman to graduate from the Faculty of Medicine. She told me she was not allowed to attend her own graduation but was required to host the male graduates’ wives and escorts. Those many years later the disappointment and bitterness remained.


By 1916 the campaign by women suffragists was successful and in that year women of Alberta were granted full suffrage, followed on October 18, 1929 by the judicial opinion of His Majesty’s Privy Council in England declaring Canadian women were “persons eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate”. This landmark decision was led by five Edmonton women.


Through the years small gains were made but because progress was slow, in 1967 the Government of Canada established a Royal Commission on the Status of Women resulting in 167 recommendations to improve the status of women being tabled.


Again progress was slow but in 1973 the now famous “Murdoch Case” took place. Irene Murdoch was a farm wife who took total care of the family farm for eight months of the year while her husband was absent working elsewhere. He beat her and she filed for divorce. The judge’s ruling was that:


“A farm wife has no interest in land belonging to her husband”. Mrs. Murdoch was left with only a black eye and a broken arm.


Women were outraged. It was a huge eye-opener and once again women rallied to change the law. It took six years but in 1979 (just 25 years ago) The Matrimonial Property Act (which allows for equal division of property acquired during marriage) became law.


I take personal pride in knowing I played a small part in contributing suggestions contained in this legislation. The government was looking at starting as before (husband’s property) and awarding something if she had been a good wife/mother and other contributions.


I submitted that it should start with a presumption of 50/50 sharing of property acquired after marriage, then taken away for such things as infidelity, neglectful parent, etc.). This was done.


The Women’s Movement also helped men:


1974


Male spouses and children can receive Canada Pension Plan benefits (previously female only could do so)


1976


Unpaid maternity leave was granted to women but by 1981 males could qualify and by 2001 full parental leave was granted


1977


An important change to the federal Citizenship Act provided for the law to be applied equally to male and female. Prior to these changes a ridiculous situation such as this occurred: A Canadian woman married to a Frenchman had to assume her husband’s nationality and her child born in France was considered of French nationality. Had the woman been French rather than Canadian married to a Canadian man, the child born in France would have been Canadian. To further confuse matters, a child born abroad of an unmarried Canadian woman could have claimed Canadian citizenship.


As a Canadian woman, had you married a non-Canadian prior to 1947 (even if you had never stepped foot outside of Canada), you would have become the nationality of your husband. After 1947,


Canadian women who married a non-Canadian were able to retain their Canadian citizenship but had to make formal application like all other immigrants.


A complicated situation like this occurred: A Canadian woman married to a non-Canadian in 1940 automatically received her husband’s nationality. Because the husband married a Canadian woman, he automatically became a Canadian after five years residence but the woman (who had been born in Canada) had to make formal application.


Our aboriginal women were discriminated against in The Indian Act because an Indian woman who married a non-Indian lost her Indian status and her husband and children were considered non-Indian. On the other hand, an Indian man marrying a non-Indian woman, he, his wife and their children would all have Indian status.


Changes to The Income Tax Act, Old Age Security, equal pay legislation, to name a few, were made to many provincial and federal laws to try to bring equality to men and women.


As recently as 1981, the Prime Minister announced Clause 28 of The Charter of Rights, ensuring all rights were guaranteed equally to men and women, could be overridden. Women once again had to lobby strongly to assure the guarantee of their rights.


Today, in 2003, at the University of Alberta, complaints continue that women are being overlooked for the prestigious Canada Research Chair program established in 1999, with only 16 percent of the positions having gone to women. At the University of Alberta women hold just nine of the 59 chairs, despite their excellent qualifications.


On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2003, a group of women rallied to protest the continuing gender wage gap.


John Philip Curran (1750-1817) words said in 1790, “ ... the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” remain true today.


During Edmonton’s formative years the conditions under which women lived gave rise to women’s organizations working for reform and improvement. They organized to help bring a gentility to frontier life and to right unjust laws. They worked for charity, education, religion, philanthropy, law, government and social reform.


The following lists but a few of the many women’s organizations:


All church denominations had women’s auxiliaries to raise funds for helping the poor and needy.


The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed to work towards prohibition. They saw the men drinking away their pay and mistreating their families while intoxicated and considered prohibition was the answer.


The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) sent comforts to service men and women in both world wars and raised money for scholarships and bursaries to educate children of World War


I and II veterans who had been killed or permanently disabled.


The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was founded by Adelaide Hoodless whose credo was: “Educate a boy and you educate a man. Educate a girl and you educate a family.” The YWCA taught sewing, cooking, nutrition, homemaking and manual training. They also were responsible for the campaign to have milk pasteurized. (Adelaide’s baby had died from drinking unpasteurized milk.)


Local Council of Women (LCW) formed all across Alberta and Edmonton’s chapter remains active. This organization was a council consisting of a representative from each women’s group in the local city or town and each local council held membership in the National Council of Women (NCW). Some of the work, past and present, done by the council:


· collected newspapers, magazines and books for isolated people such as pioneer farmers, rail crews, lighthouse keepers and prospectors and arranged for the railways to distribute them,


· advocated abolition of the death penalty and suppression of traffic in women and children.


· supported establishment of bureaux of education and health, rehabilitation centres for mentally defective adults, equal pay for equal work, more favourable succession duties for widows, federal government report on effects of radiation on living organisms,


· municipal hospitals,


· women’s suffrage and encouragement of women in politics and political affairs


“The Council has been largely responsible in securing every reform in laws affecting women.” (A Country in the Making, page 149.


Women’s Institute (WI) Their motto is “For Home and Country” and their aim was to improve the health of families. They advocated child welfare with medical and dental inspections in schools, immunization, libraries, community recreation centres, establishment of Agricultural Colleges and Home Economics, and food conservation during World War I.


United Farm Women (UFW), Canadian Girl Guides (CGG), Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT), Victorian Order of Nurses (VON), and other organizations too numerous to mention all contributed to the improvement of life in our city, province and country.


Women worked to correct laws such as those that allowed: imprisonment of women who didn’t keep a tidy house, the legal whipping of women, and children under 11 being employed around dangerous machinery.


We should all be grateful for the work they did and continue to do.