The Role of Women

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The Role of Women
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How Did Women Contribute?

• At War
• Many volunteered to work overseas as nurses
  (bluebirds), ambulance drivers, field hospitals
  just behind front-line trenches
• We had 291 operations in ten nights, so that
  will give you a fair idea of a weeks work.

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• At Home
• Filled labour shortages
• 35,000 worked in munitions factories or war
  related industries
• Work conditions poor and dangerous

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• Drove buses, streetcars, banks, police forces,
  civil service jobs, farming (farmerettes) to
  bring in harvest
• Groups of women knit socks, rolled bandages,
  arranged fundraising, sent food parcels, cards,
  letters, comfort visits to families,

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• We decided to become farmerettes when we read in
  the paper they needed people to come, and there
  were no men. So this friend and I said that we
  would go. We volunteered. Masses of young
  people went out and brought that all in.

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• I wanted to do my share, and I joined the Red
  Cross and helped roll bandages and knit socks.
  My first ones were big enough to fit an elephant,
  and after that, I became very proficient so
  proficient that I knit a pair of socks a day
  without trouble.

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• You see, everybody felt that had to do
  something. You just couldnt sit there. There
  was a phrase, Doing your bit. Well, that was
  pretty well the keynote feeling all through that
  First World War. Everybody was extremely
  patriotic, and everybody wanted to do a bit.
  If theres anything we could do to help, we must
  do it.

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Struggles for Womens Rights

• Since women were contributing so much for the war
  effort, they wanted more say in making decisions
  for the country.
• SUFFRAGISTS women who organized themselves to
  gain the right to vote.

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• Nellie McClung (one of Canadas great social
  reformers)
• Began her career pre WWI in MB
• Certainly women belong in the home, but not 24
  hours a day. They should have exactly the same
  freedom as men.

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• When WWI broke out, she was proven right re
  status of women.
• Women began replacing males in the workforce.

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• She began to organize and share ideas and work
  towards political equality with men
• equal opportunities in medicine and law
• right to own property
• better working conditions
• better public health
• better wages

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Other famous Suffragists

• Dorothy Davis (BC)
• Margaret Gordon (ON)
• Emily Murphy (AB)
• Alice Jamieson (AB)

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• Read p. 117 Spotlight on Nellie McClung

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Women Get the Provincial Vote!

• MB women first received the provincial vote
  1916
• SK and AB followed soon after
• 1917 ON and BC get the vote

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Women Get the Federal Vote!

• December 1917 -gt Wartime Elections Act
• granted mothers, sisters, wives, and nurses
  serving in the armed
• forces the right to vote.
• by the end of the war, almost all women over 21
  could vote federally.

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• 1920 The Dominion Elections Act gave women the
  right to run for Parliament (excluding Asians,
  Aboriginals, and other minority groups)
• Chinese and Japanese get the vote in 1947
• Aboriginals and status Indians get the vote in
  1960

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• HW
• Create a timeline that highlights women suffrage
  as represented in the two charts on page 118.

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The End ?