Employment, Relief and the Breadwinner Ideal: A Historiography of the Great Depression in Canada

1416 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Role of women during the great depression

Hollingsworth and Tyyska discuss the employment of women in their article, both wage work and work performed outside of the “paid labour force.” (14). They also look at work discrimination of women based on gender and marital status. They argue that disapproval of married women working for wages during the Depression was expressed not only by those in position of power, such as politicians, but also by the general public and labour unions. They suggest that the number of women in the workforce increased as more young wives stayed working until the birth of their first child and older women entered the workforce in response to depression based deprivation. Hollingsworth and Tyyska also give examples of work that married women did that was an extension of their domestic duties such as babysitting for working mothers or taking in laundry. They also state that some women took in boarders, sold extra produce from gardens, or ran make-shift restaurant operations out of their homes.
Baillargeon also mentions the work that women did in order to earn money to help care for their families. The women she interviewed did many of the same things mentioned by Hollingsworth and Tyyska at home, only a few were employed outside the home. In several cases the husbands of the women did additional work on top of their regular jobs.
Srigley looks at women’s employment in terms of the effects of intersecting factors of race, ethnicity, marital status, gender and class. She argues that: “Anglo-Celtic dominance created both privileges and disadvantages for female workers who had differing access to employment.” Srigley states that: “Canadian feminist historians . . . have paid significantly less attention to race than to gender as an analyti...

... middle of paper ...

...r 1998):466-491, accessed February 23rd, 2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.libproxy. uwinnipeg.ca/ehost/detail?vid=4&sid=ad10fcc5-3639-419d-a39f 901114630 86e%40 sessionmgr4002&hid= 4106&bdata =# db=ahl&AN=1093421

Katrina Srigley, “‘In case you hadn’t noticed!’: Race. Ethinicity, and Women’s Wage-Earning in a Depression-Era City,” Labour/ Le Travail, Vol. 55 (Spring 2005): 69-105, accessed February 23rd, 2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.libproxy. uwinnipeg.ca /ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=ad10fcc5-3639-419d-a39f-90111463086e %40 sessionmgr4002&hid=4106&bdata=#db=ahl&AN=44182314

Eric Strikwerda, “‘Married Men Should, I Feel, be Treated Differently’: Work, Relief, and Unemployed Men on the Urban Canadian Prairie, 1929-32,” Left History Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring/ Summer 2007): 30-51, accessed February 23rd, 2014, https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/lh/issue/current

Show More
Related

  • The Great Depression: Impact and Response in Canada

    1512 Words  | 4 Pages

    On the day of October 29, 1929 the Great Depression had begun. This was due to the worth of the New York stock market falling intensely. The Great Depression was a time when Canadians suffered extraordinary levels of poverty due to unemployment. It shaped Canadian’s political views, and also their views about their country and role of the government. Canadians joined together in various new political parties, labor groups and other organizations that represented detailed regional, economic or political interest. Canadians scrambled through the crisis with a makeshift blend of private and public charity. Private Citizens in wealthier provinces recognized the dilemma of Saskatchewan and sent hundreds of carloads of fruit, vegetables and clothing westward. This showed that Canada is a crew of kind and supportive individuals.

    Read More

  • The Great Depression in Canada

    986 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Depression was a terrible point in Canadian history, and for most of the world. It was a point in time where thousands of people lost their jobs, and even lost their homes because of the depressed economy. Business was booming in the early 1920s, but when companies tried to expand, and therefore issued stocks, the economy was thrown off. Some investors sold their stocks for high prices, and as a result, everyone else followed. With less of a demand, stock prices became fractions of what they used to be, and on October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, followed by the Toronto and Montreal Stock exchanges. This collapse of the stock markets caused a depression like which the world had never seen before. It was important for governments to find methods to deal with the depression, but the Canadian government wasn't very successful in its attempts to deal with the Great Depression.

    Read More

  • The Great Depression in Canada

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    Canada suffered its longest and most terrible economic depression in its history between 1929 and 1939. It is now known as the Great Depression. This essay will demonstrate the major causes, political, economic and social consequences, and the government’s solutions from the Great Depression. The Great Depression affected all of Canada and is a key part of our history. It is important that we learn from it so we can prevent it from happening again.

    Read More

  • Colonial Women and Her Changing Role

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    Evidence can be gleaned from the remaining copies of newspapers from this time period as to the types of jobs that women were pursuing. There were three types of ads offering work for them. The first, which comprised about 43% of the total, was for those who had involved herself in some kind of economic activity ad was seeking to market her product. The second type was for women who were ot presently employed, but seeking to find a particular type of work. This could include nurses, seamstresses and domestic help. The third ad category was seeking to employ a female as a wet nurse, housekeeper, and even plantation and dairy managers, shopkeepers or teachers.11.

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: The Character of Lena Lingard

    1791 Words  | 4 Pages

    Weiner, Lynn Y. From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820-1980. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1985.

    Read More

  • Second-Wave Feminism and Labour in Canada

    2849 Words  | 6 Pages

    Canadian workplaces today seem to be a fairly diverse place, with a blend of many religions, ethnicities, and genders present. However, although people preach affirmative action and melting pots in current times, many inequality and power issues still abound. One strikingly noticeable example is gender discrimination. Women in the workforce face many challenges like smaller wages, harassment, male privilege in hiring or promotions, and lack of support when pregnant or raising children. One half of the planet is women, and it can be assumed the same for Canada, but they still face judgment at work because they lack the authority to dispute against big corporations or even their male supervisor. It cannot be argued that Canadian women’s status has worsened over the past hundred years, of course, thanks to feminism and activism. However, their status is not as high as it could be. Women as a group first started fighting for workplace equality during the second wave of feminism, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Legislation was approved during the second wave to try to bring gender equality to the workplace. Feminists both collided and collaborated with unions and employers to ensure women received fair treatment in an occupation. Quebec had the same issues, only the province approached the conflict differently than English Canada with its own unique viewpoint. It became clear that women were entering the workplace and did not plan on leaving. Second-wave feminism in Canada shifted power from the government and businesses to women in order to try to bring equality, although the discrimination never completely disappeared.

    Read More

  • The Fight for Women's equality in Canada

    1789 Words  | 4 Pages

    Joy Parr, "Rethinking Work and Kinship in a Canadian Hosiery Town, 1910-1950," Feminist Studies, 13, no. 1 (1987): 137-162,

    Read More

  • Women Workers After World War 2 Summary

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stephen appears the dilemma of extreme inequality between male and female labour during the post-war time. When the World War II reached the victory thousands of Canadian men was coming from the fronts back home. The government wanted to ensure a smooth conversion of soldiers, who got used to continuous battle and everyday survival, to a peaceful society. At the same time women were serving the labour market, occupying both male and female jobs, in order to keep the economy functioning during the war. However, they were asked to make a way for coming back men. While men were receiving their employment, the rate of unemployed women was growing up. Therefore, it becomes clear that the main problem of employment after World War II is that the economic rehabilitation in post-war time lied in the mass elimination of women from the labour market. Basically saying women had to leave their work and return to domesticity in order to provide employment opportunities for men. This has violated equality rights and discriminated women from the labour

    Read More

  • Melissa J. Doak Model Of Gender Inequality

    185 Words  | 1 Pages

    Gender inequality has been an abiding battle for centuries. Melissa J. Doak, author of Money, Income, and Poverty, states that “a wage survey taken in 1833 in Philadelphia found that most women workers in local textile factories received less for working seventy-eight hours per week than men were getting for one ten-hour day.” The question is why, after 180 years, this still continues to be an issue? Throughout history we see that men have become the breadwinners, while women were at home taking care of the children and carrying out household chores. This model created expectations of what both men and women were supposed to do in society. Therefore, this prototype or new stereotype of living didn’t provide many opportunities for women in the

    Read More

  • Hairspray Gender Roles

    974 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is fundamental to define “old” and “new” roles of women to make a comparison between them. The “old” role of women in the workplace involved menial jobs, and before World War II, women were expected to remain at home and raise kids. Roughly thirty states enacted laws to prohibit married women from working

    Read More

  • The Great Depression of Canada

    1148 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Great Depression was not just a little event in history, hence the word “great”, but a major economical setback that would change Canada, and the world, forever. The word “great” may not mean the same thing it does now; an example of this is the ‘Great’ War. These events were not ‘good’ or ‘accomplishing’ in any way, quite the opposite, but in those times it most likely meant ‘big’. What made it big are many factors, both in the 20’s and 30’s, which can be categorized into three main points: economics, politics and society. With all these events, compressed into ten years, this period of economic hardship of the 1930’s truly deserves the title the “Great Depression”.

    Read More

  • In Want of a Wife: Jane Austen’s Reaction to Marriage

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the Romantic Era, very few occupations were open to women, as most were expected to run their husbands house. For the women who remained unmarried (whether by choice or by circumstance), their opportunities to earn money were very limited. One of the most common choices available for a young maid unmarried is to be a governess. Though this was never a first choice, it was one of the most readily available jobs for women and included a lack of re...

    Read More

  • Women's Roles In The 1920s Essay

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the Great War and the huge amount of men that were deployed created the need to employ women in hospitals, factories, and offices. When the war ended the women would return home or do more traditional jobs such as teaching or shop work. “Also in the 1920s the number of women working raised by fifty percent.” They usually didn’t work if they were married because they were still sticking to the role of being stay at home moms while the husband worked and took care of the family financially. But among the single women there was a huge increase in employment. “Women were still not getting payed near as equally as men and were expected to quit their jobs if they married or pregnant.” Although women were still not getting payed as equally it was still a huge change for the women's

    Read More

  • Collective Bargaining In Canada

    9286 Words  | 19 Pages

    Demographics and diversity of the labour force has been very dynamic in the last couple of decade in Canada with significant effect on union membership (Foley and Baker, 2009, Statistics Canada, 2017). The labour force has been described as “feminized” (Briskin and McDermott 1993) as women are increasingly integrated into formal work and union activities, which require unions to cater to the needs of women as a distinct group. These women have continued to struggle for equity in pay for work of equal value, increase in minimum wage, equity in employment legislations, reproductive and other issues (Foley and Baker,

    Read More

  • Gender Inequality at a Workplace

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    The opportunities available to women in the market are not as diverse as those presented to men. Still, the construct of gender ideology influences how employers undertake economic decisions, and that is why companies still have jobs labelled as “men’s work” and occupations categorized as “women’s work.” Indeed, the pervasiveness of gender differences in labor markets is undeniably true, specifically with respect to salary gap between men and women, occupational gender segregation of men and women, and the challenge that women face in terms of juggling their time and attention between their career and family life. There is no denying that the salary of men is far more than that of women’s. In the Great Britain (and other parts of the globe), there are pieces of evidence which suggest that gendered practices of participation in the labor force still have significant impact on the economic security level that men and women develop over the course of their lives (Warren 606).

    Read More

More about Employment, Relief and the Breadwinner Ideal: A Historiography of the Great Depression in Canada

Open Document