Women's Movement

WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, as an organized political movement in BC, had its roots in the women's social reform groups of the 1880s and 1890s. Women of all ethnocultural groups in colonial BC—mostly aboriginal and English-speaking immigrant women, with smaller numbers of Asian and other European women—had informal networks centred on shared domestic work, but as BC's population mushroomed in the frontier society, the colony's white, middle-class women organized more formal groups to rescue sick and destitute people and to improve the moral climate of BC. In 1883 a chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in VICTORIA with 49 members. They opened a "refuge home" for prostitutes, unwed mothers and women who were sick, poor and/or elderly. In 1894 Lady Aberdeen, the wife of Canada's gov gen, set up Local Councils of Women in Victoria and VANCOUVER, as branches of the National Council of Women of Canada, established in 1893 for all Canadian women interested in organized work in any field.

Early Organizations

In 1898 she also set up a BC branch of the Victorian Order of Nurses, which provided visiting nurses to areas that had no other medical services (see also NURSING). The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), established in BC before 1900, operated a hostel and employment agency for young single women. Evlyn FARRIS and others created the University Women's Club in 1907, with the long-range goal of improving conditions in education and employment for BC women, and the immediate goal of founding UBC. And in 1909 the BC Department of Agriculture, following a successful model in Ontario, established the BC Women's Institutes, whose stated aims were to promote "household science" and to bring female friendship to women, mostly rural women. These organizations were instrumental in assisting British Columbians in need and in bringing about social and political change, especially as it affected women and children. The WCTU is remembered mainly for its puritanical views on drinking alcohol, but its members were also tireless promoters of a BC woman's right to run for election as a school trustee, to be paid a higher minimum wage, to receive a "Mother's Pension" from the government if she was a widow with children, and other rights.

Women's Suffrage

Members of all women's organizations fought long and hard for WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE, as individuals and through the Political Equality League. When Evlyn Farris was elected to the Senate of the newly formed UBC in 1912, she persuaded the administration to allow women to take science courses. The UWC also campaigned for a shorter work week for women store clerks and organized Vancouver women to do their Christmas shopping early so as to relieve pressure on the clerks; established the first parent-teacher associations in BC; pressed for change in inheritance laws in favour of widows; and lobbied for women's right to practise law in BC.

The women of BC threw themselves into the war effort during WWI, including performing "men's work" in the war industries. In 1915 the Trades and Labour Congress, Canada's central labour organization, dropped its demand to exclude women from factories, workshops and mines, and added a clause about equal pay for equal work. BC women finally got the vote in 1917, and redoubled their efforts on other social reforms. In family law, they lobbied for approved foster homes and CHILD CARE centres and campaigned to keep juvenile offenders out of adult PRISONS. In 1917, the same year Helen Gregory MacGILL became BC's first female judge, the Infants Act was amended so that mothers as well as fathers were considered legal guardians of their own children. After a long campaign, Helena GUTTERIDGE and other BC women succeeded in raising the minimum wage for women in 1918. The Mother's Pension Act, passed in 1920 to provide a monthly subsidy to single mothers, became BC's first social assistance legislation. Through the 1920s the Women's Institutes were instrumental in establishing hospitals and in helping the BC government set up a public health system. Women's groups also lobbied in the areas of child labour and maternity leave. During this same period, Dorothy STEEVES and Laura JAMIESON opened a BC chapter of the WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM, and the Women's Independent Political Assoc took action on the high cost of living. All of this activity took place before 1929, the year Canadian women were declared to be persons under the law.

Depression and War

During the Depression, women's groups in Vancouver pressured city council to assist the many single women who had lost their jobs and who were ineligible for government relief; meanwhile they organized emergency shelter and food for the women. They took food to men in the RELIEF CAMPS, fought for better conditions in the camps, and fed and supported the men who participated in the protest that culminated in BLOODY SUNDAY. They organized public lectures on divorce law, child care and birth control, which was illegal at the time. And women were more active in supporting the LABOUR MOVEMENT and bringing reforms to trade unions during the 1930s than at any other time in BC history.

When Canada joined WWII in 1939, so did BC women, as nurses and other military personnel and, once again, in the war industries and support efforts at home. This time many women stayed at work after war's end: BC women worked outside the home in greater numbers than ever before. With the more buoyant economy came better public funding in health, education, HUMAN CARE SERVICES and other areas, and better education and employment opportunities for women.

The Modern Movement

The 1960s brought a new awareness of discrimination against women in western society, and for the first time large numbers of women had access to legal, effective birth control. The stage was set for the next wave of the women's movement. In BC as elsewhere, women's subcommittees formed within schools, trade unions, professional associations and non-profit groups. In 1969 a feminist newspaper, the Pedestal, began publishing in Vancouver. That year 200 women from Canada and the US attended a Western Regional Conference on Women's Liberation at UBC. In 1970 the federal Royal Commission on the Status of Women published its report, which documented massive discrimination against Canadian women in many areas of life and made 167 recommendations for improvement. The abortion issue was among the most volatile; in the spring of 1970, an "abortion caravan" of a few vehicles set out from Vancouver and BURNS LAKE and proceeded to Ottawa, stopping all along the way to stage demonstrations, garner media attention and pick up supporters. The caravan drew the support of several politicians, including Grace MacINNIS. In May the women arrived in Ottawa and chained themselves to the galleries in the House of Commons in protest. It was the start of an 18-year fight to decriminalize abortion in Canada, and BC women were instrumental in the campaign.

Through the 1970s the women's movement in BC moved in 2 streams: consciousness-raising and political activism. Women's support groups, therapy groups and self-defence workshops sprang up. Women also organized the BC Child Care Federation to lobby for better funding and public policy on child care. They worked within trade unions and political parties; they also established the Service, Office and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC), predominantly a women's union, which represented workers at day care centres, social service agencies, theatres, pubs and restaurants. Women formed health collectives, explored alternative health care, lobbied for safe, effective birth control and played a more active part in their own pregnancy and childbirth. The first credit courses in women's studies in Canada were offered at UBC in 1971. BC women operated Press Gang Printers, the first all-women's printing company in Canada, which later gave birth to PRESS GANG PUBLISHERS; they opened the Vancouver Women's Bookstore, women's centres, TRANSITION HOUSES and rape crisis centres.

In the 1980s the movement branched out into more focussed interest groups. Domestic workers, most of them non-white immigrant women, continued their campaign to be covered under the BC Labour Standards Act (and finally succeeded in 1995). In 1981 aboriginal women occupied the BC regional office of the Department of Indian Affairs to protest against actions of the DIA and to demand action on deplorable living conditions in their communities (see ABORIGINAL RIGHTS; FIRST NATIONS). MediaWatch was established in Vancouver to improve the image of women and girls in the media. Women In Focus, a gallery owned collectively by women artists, was set up in Vancouver (see also ART, VISUAL). A BC chapter of the DisAbled Women's Network (DAWN) was founded in 1985. That year Canada's first Lesbian Centre opened in Vancouver (see also GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS); BC families successfully challenged the law prohibiting a child from being given the mother's surname without the father's permission; and aboriginal women effected changes to the federal Indian Act, which had divested women of their legal Native status if they married white men. Early in 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law criminalizing abortion. In Nov of that year, Everywoman's Health Clinic opened its doors in Vancouver and began performing therapeutic abortions, as 300 anti-choice protestors demonstrated outside.

During the late 1980s and 1990s other women's issues surfaced, some of them not even mentioned in the 1970 Royal Commission report. All 4 universities in BC established offices devoted to sexual harassment policy. The extent of violence against women, particularly rape, "domestic abuse" and sexual abuse of children, came more fully to light. By 1990 poverty was still very much a BC women's issue, with women earning an average of 65% of men's wages. Women have also raised public awareness about lesbian mothers, employment benefits for same-sex couples, censorship and pornography, trans-gendered and cross-gendered people, prostitutes and other sex trade workers; and also the effects on women of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement, world monetary practices and the federal and BC budgets during less prosperous times. Women have also sounded the alarm about health issues such as the sharp increase in Caesarean sections and hysterectomies, prevention and treatment of breast cancer, and new reproductive technologies. By the beginning of the 21st century, in spite of years' worth of headlines announcing the end of the women's movement, work was continuing on women's issues in all areas of BC life.