HIST 2600 feb 12 Citizenship and Feminism
1. constructing the ideal woman in 19 century Canada
a. continuity in the sense that during this period men were expected to be the
primary breadwinner
b. changes in the sense that more and more women are joining the workforce
c. womens lives revolved around the home
d. crucial to running the home
e. creation and construction of the separate spheres; public sphere (business,
politics, outside of the home), and the private sphere (home, womens
realm)
f. ideal woman was constructed by social reformers and critics and religious
officials; keep women in the home and in their traditional domestic roles
g. expectations
i. at home, sewing, looking prim and proper, being quiet and keeping
to herself but keeping up with her home duties
ii. piety; practice and embody religious teachings
iii. purity: virginity was womens greatest treasure, to be saved for
marriage
iv. submission; obey men because they are women’s superiors
v. domesticity; home was woman’s realm; she should make the home
into a refuge for husband and children
h. middle class resolves
i. working class women weren’t able to live up to this ideal realistically
j. prior to confederation, when the ideal women notion was popular, few
Canadian women had a career
k. work was informal, irregular and part time
l. women work because wages helped women feel a degree of personal
independence and self worth and more and more women were needed to
supplement the family wage
m. moving towards working in labour sectors that were once closed to them
n. ramifications for the country and women as a whole
i. working is connected to political victories women gain in the early
th
19 century
ii. womens work (whether paid or not) contributed to the Canadian
economy beyond being wives and mothers
o. women in Canada are migrating from farms to cities, central and eastern
Canada moving west
p. immigrant women are coming to Canada; married and single—they take
the lower status jobs
2. unpaid employment in the rural and urban home
a. generally womens farm work was unpaid
b. on farms, work was divided based on gender
c. womens work was inside the house (cooking, cleaning, laundry, child
care) and outside (small livestock care, gardening, looking after orchards)
d. men were in the fields tending to crops and the larger livestock e. women were often called on to help in jobs that weren’t generally theirs
(picking berries)
f. women have a double burden; they have their expected chores and tasks
and also male expected ones when its busy
g. indispensible to the success of agricultural operations in Canada but don’t
receive recognition, wages, or legal claim to the farm
h. housewives also had an enormous number of domestic tasks and recived
no compensation
i. most housewives were spending their days trying to make their husbands
wage stretch; women were trying to grow and make as much of their own
food as possible, making necessities like soap, candles, and clothing, and
acting like doctors providing medical care to the family
j. womens duties in the home change thanks to technology and
industrialization, with fewer children in the household, women workloads
increase (children cant do chores)
k. inventions come out that help women with their work loads
l. more emphasis on cleanliness and hygiene because of germ theory and
disease propagation
m. women are pressured into keeping their homes as clean as possible as well
as clothing and themselves and their families
i. hand powered washing machines, fridges,
n. women are using the home to make money, with industrialization women
can do factory work in the home called putting out system
i. instead of going to factories every day, factory owners gave
women work to do in their homes which allowed them to continue
caring for the family while making a wage
ii. children often used to help complete the work
iii. not constant or reliable work, not guaranteed your money
iv. some women took in laundry (bachelor neighbor that couldn’t do
laundry) or sewing
o. boarding houses
p. selling excess household goods at markets
3. paid employment
a. domestic serviceth th
i. later 19 early 20 century
ii. domestic service was the single most important paid employment
for women in Canada
iii. in 1891, 41% of working women were domestic servants
iv. young girls 15-30
v. no formal training, just being a women was what you neede
More
Less
