Canadian Women & the Struggle for Equality by Lorna Marsden

Marsden, Lorna R. Canadian Women & Struggle for Equality. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2012. xi + 290 pages. Hardcover, $29.99. Canadian Women & Struggle for Equality is a historical-sociological account of transformational process women went through in their quest for equality in Canada. Lorna R. Marsden, a sociologist, activist, former Canadian senator, and former university president, recounts long road toward equality women have traveled. She discusses this struggle in context of evolution of law, demographics, labor force, health care, immigration, and world wars. In effect, this book aims at a comprehensive explanation of how women and women's organizations contributed to social change and how sociological circumstances within which major improvements in status of women in Canada came to pass. The focus is on means through which Canadian women and their male supporters succeeded in moving their agendas into law or common practice. What is remarkable was that social change in Canada was slow and accretive, and struggle for women's equality occurred without social strife or acrimonious debate. The author traces gender inequality in Canada to British North America (BNA) of 1867, which became basis of Canadian constitution. The first major flaw of BNA was the complete omission of rights or recognition of women. Women neither participated directly in nor were mentioned as a group in debates that led to BNA Act (p. 30). As a result, women were ignored in public life. Voting rights excluded women, and women's citizenship was tied until 1946 to their husbands or fathers. If a woman married a non-British subject, she automatically lost, along with other citizenship rights, right of franchise. Married women were (or were expected to be) dependent on their husbands' income and could not seek paid employment outside home. Single or widowed women were expected to live on modest means. Women were not likely to consider themselves equal to men and, even if contemplated, opportunities in public domain to express such beliefs were limited. While women could vote in public elections in 1960s, there were very few female representatives in legislatures or courts. Furthermore, only married women had access to birth control. In fact, general perception was that women achieved a higher moral status through motherhood. Consequently, women were not only relegated to maternal role, but were also denied any significant role in other aspects of society. Even marriage did not confer equality on women, as evidenced in Irene Murdoch Case in Alberta in 1973, in which Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Mrs. Murdoch, despite building and maintaining family ranch together with her husband, was not entitled to an interest in lands. Some historical events, notably involvement of women in First and Second World Wars, helped create economic opportunities and improve women's rights. Women's suffrage, for example, came as a consequence of war. While some provinces had granted women voting rights in municipal elections as property owners, Canadian Parliament debated whether provincial suffrage automatically gave women vote in federal elections. The law granting women federal vote came into force January 1, 1919. …

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