Women's suffrage in Canada

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Louise McKinney, first woman to be sworn in in the Alberta Legislative Assembly and first woman to be elected to parliament in Canada and the British Empire .

The struggle for women's suffrage in Canada lasted only one generation for white women in some parts of the country. The women's suffrage movement is often viewed as comparatively short, moderate and civilized. In the 1970s and 1980s, a more critical view prevailed: With all the recognition for the successful resistance to the patriarchal denial of women's suffrage , the contradiction that lay in the exclusion of women of certain races and classes was highlighted. The Canadian provinces introduced women's suffrage from 1916, and in some cases earlier than was the case at the national level. Taillight was Quebec : Women's suffrage was at the local level until 1940 law. In 1917, against the backdrop of the war, the Wartime Elections Act granted certain groups of women the right to vote at the national level . This went hand in hand with the disadvantage of other population groups. On May 24, 1918, with the Act to Confer the Electoral Franchise on Women, active national suffrage was extended to all women of British and French descent from the age of 21, with the same criteria for women and men. It was not until August 1960 that the Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act extended the right to vote to all Canadians. The right to vote at the national level was granted to women in 1919. It was not until 1929 that a court case initiated and won by The Famous Five Emily Murphy , Irene Marryat Parlby , Nellie Mooney McClung , Louise Crummy McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards finally resolved that the right to vote in the Constitution also applied to the Senate, not just to the House of Commons . The first election of a woman to the national parliament, namely the lower house, took place on December 6, 1921.

Historical lines of development

Connection with the efforts to abolish slavery

The movement to introduce women's suffrage in the 19th century was essentially linked to abolitionism . From the United States, African American women who, like Mary Ann Shadd , came to Canada as escaped slaves or as free citizens, brought the idea of ​​women's rights with them.

Equality for women resulted in disadvantage for other groups

The granting of the right to vote to certain women in the Wartime Elections Act of 1917 (see below) went hand in hand with the disadvantage of other sections of the population: Immigrants from Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ukraine lost their right to vote, as did conscientious objectors and women without relatives in the army, the in some states were allowed to vote beforehand. Women who were expected to receive support from the government were given the right to vote, and other groups that were opposed to the government and war policy lost it.

Investigation of possible influencing factors on the political representation of women

Reward for achievements in the First World War?

The theory that women's suffrage was obtained after a brief, moderate struggle and that it was a reward for the achievements of women in World War I is supported in historical research. On closer inspection, the granting of women's suffrage was a political calculation: the then Prime Minister Robert Borden pursued the goal of being able to maintain his majority of Conservatives and Unionists in order to be able to introduce conscription. The Liberals from Quebec were opposed to this plan. Bordon enforced the Wartime Election Act in September 1917 , which gave the relatives of soldiers who were already fighting in Europe the right to vote; of these it was to be assumed that they would support the introduction of compulsory voting as an aid measure for their family members. However, the introduction of compulsory voting was so popular that it would not have been necessary to extend the voting rights.

According to Sangster, too, she does not allow the reward theory to hold up; it ignores the decades of female activists: the debates about who should be entitled to vote spanned more than a century, from the advancement of women in Lower Canada in the 1840s to the right to vote for the First Nations in the 1960s.

Connection with the development of the male suffrage

In the development of male suffrage, an exclusion of members of certain religions, races and classes can be determined. However, the percentage of men eligible to vote increased over time. Universal suffrage for all white men was not achieved until 1921. The initial exclusions show that society did not recognize the equality of all its members; This line also includes the unequal treatment of women and the denial of the right to vote.

Development in the states

Even during the colonial period, women tried to exercise their right to vote. In 1844, some rural widows in Halton, western Canada , cast their votes for the Conservative candidate, but this was immediately challenged. The colonial constitutions of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were ambiguous in determining eligibility for the right to vote because they spoke of "persons" without distinguishing between women and men. Therefore, some women who owned real estate tried to exercise their right to vote. However, the ambiguity in the constitutions was soon resolved. A group led by MP Louis-Joseph Papineau developed a proposal that would deprive women of all voting rights. Papineau justified that he wanted to keep the female members of his family the peaceful place in private. The draft first became law in Lower Canada in 1834 and in the province of Canada in 1849 , there was no resistance. Paradoxically, Papineau's mother, Rosalie Papineau, voted for her son in the 1809 elections in Lower Canada.

Helena Gutteridge, the first female councilor of Vancouver, speaks at a demonstration in 1938.

Adams sees the beginning of the women's suffrage movement in the founding of the Toronto Women's Literary Club by Emily Howard Stowe , the first Canadian female doctor, in 1876. The club aimed at introducing women's suffrage, but it was not opportune to make it known on behalf. The women's suffrage movement spread within a decade in almost all states except Quebec and also took social reform concerns such as the commitment to improving health care as tasks. In Quebec, however, efforts arose to deprive women of the right to vote in local elections and the right to inheritance. In the thirty years after 1885 there were bills in state legislatures introducing women's suffrage, but they all failed. In 1900, all women who owned a particular property had the right to vote in local elections.

The states introduced women's suffrage one after the other, and in some cases earlier than was the case at the national level: 1916 Alberta (according to another source 1918), Manitoba and Saskatchewan (according to another source 1918), British Columbia followed in 1917 (according to another source 1918 ) and Ontario (according to another source not until 1918), 1918 Nova Scotia , 1919 New Brunswick (according to another source 1918) and the Prince Edward Islands in 1922 .

Taillight was Quebec : Women's suffrage was at the local level until 1940 law. The law, which also gave First Nations members the right to vote, was only introduced into parliament on April 9, 1949 and came into force on April 25, 1949.

Helena Gutteridge was the first woman to be elected to a city council in Vancouver , British Columbia . A native of London, she founded the BC Women's Suffrage League shortly after arriving in Vancouver in 1911 . She later became a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation , a socialist political party, and served on their city council for one term.

Development at the national level

Right to vote

In 1883, a Toronto women's suffrage group sent their first petition for women's suffrage to John Macdonald , Canada's first prime minister. In 1885 he introduced the proposal to parliament to give a limited number of women and members of the First Nations the right to vote who fulfilled certain property requirements. But because of the strong headwind, the prime minister immediately withdrew the part of his proposal that referred to women.

In 1917, against the background of the war, the Wartime Elections Act granted certain groups of women the right to vote at the national level, the exact composition of which can be found in the literature: nurses who served in the war; Euro-American women who worked in the army or had close relatives there (father, husband or son) or whose fathers, men or sons were killed or wounded in the war; Women whose husbands, sons or fathers were killed or wounded in war; Another source also mentions the requirement that the women admitted be electorally equal to men at the state level.

On May 24, 1918, with the Act to Confer the Electoral Franchise on Women, active national suffrage was extended to all women of British and French descent from the age of 21, with the same criteria for women and men. The women's movement, which had been strengthened by the dispute over the Wartime Election Act , had campaigned for this, as had the liberals . For some women, this resulted in the loss of the right to vote: in states where the right to vote was linked to property, non-property women were no longer allowed to vote, whereas the Wartime Election Act allowed them to vote regardless of property if they had one close relatives in the army. Members of the First Nations were disqualified from voting, as well as people of Asian descent. In 1920 the property restrictions were lifted.

In 1949 (according to another source: 1948) the right to vote was granted to people of Asian descent.

In 1950 and 1951, amendments to the Indian Act and Canada Elections Act extended the right to vote at the national level to First Nations veterans and their wives, as well as those who normally lived outside the Reservations, if they waived the tax exemptions. which the Indian Act granted them. In 1950 the Inuit had the right to vote, in 1951 all residents of the Northwest Territories . Ballot boxes for the Inuit were not erected in the Eastern Arctic until 1962.

It was not until August 1960 that the Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act extended the right to vote to all Canadians.

Passive women's suffrage

Emily Murphy, Canadian women's rights activist, feminist, lawyer and author. In 1916 she became the first female judge in Canada and the British Empire.

In 1919 women were given the right to stand as a candidate. Other sources cite later dates and speak of a limited right to vote; but this is probably due to the fact that it was not until 1929, in a court case initiated and won by The Famous Five Emily Murphy , Irene Marryat Parlby , Nellie Mooney McClung , Louise Crummy McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards , that the right to stand for election in the constitution was finally clarified the Senate applied, not just to the House of Commons .

The first election of a woman to the national parliament, namely to the House of Commons , was on December 6, 1921. Her name was Agnes Campbell McPhail . In February 1930, a woman was appointed senator for the first time.

reception

Idealization of what has been achieved

In some areas of Canada, the struggle for women's suffrage for white women lasted only a generation. The women's suffrage movement is often viewed as comparatively short, moderate and civilized. Those who stand up for the law have themselves contributed to this image by presenting themselves to the Canadian people as - compared to the British suffragettes - reasonable, rational and peaceful.

The generation after that where women's suffrage became law tended to portray it as a victory of enlightenment and progress, as a sign that the achievement of women in building the nation had been recognized. This view, which saw the achievement of women's suffrage as the victory of the just cause, persisted until the 1940s. In the 1970s and 1980s, a more critical view prevailed. With all due recognition for the successful resistance to the patriarchal denial of women's suffrage, the contradiction that lay in the exclusion of women of certain races and classes was highlighted.

Influence of the sources

Flora MacDonald Denison, about 1911-1914; President of the Canadian Suffrage Association

Far more public attention is paid to women's suffrage in Canada than any other historical effort to achieve equality for Canadian women. Sangster is of the opinion that concentrating on the right to vote would not adequately appreciate the importance that class, origin, race and religion played in combat and would thus shorten the presentation of historical developments. The importance that individual women would have in the tradition would also be decisively determined by the amount of biographical material that has come down from them. Emily Murphy , for example, left an extensive archive of newspaper clippings that emphasized her role, while the legacies of Mary Ann Shadd Cary , who first sparked a discussion on race and gender, and Flora MacDonald Denison , who played an important role at international level played, no materials could be made available to research. Since socialists like May Darwin and Mary Cotton had to earn their own living, they received less attention than others who could be more exposed to the public.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 35.
  2. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, pp. 35–36.
  3. ↑ a b c Jad Adams; Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 279.
  4. ↑ a b c d Jad Adams; Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 277.
  5. ↑ a b Jad Adams; Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 278-279.
  6. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 272
  7. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 16
  8. ^ A b c Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 14
  9. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 20
  10. ↑ Jad Adams; Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 278.
  11. ↑ a b c d e Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 3.
  12. ↑ Benjamin Isakhan, Stephen Stockwell: The Edinburgh Companion to the History of Democracy. Edinburgh University Press 2012, p. 342.
  13. ↑ a b c Caroline Daley, Melanie Nolan (Ed.): Suffrage and Beyond. International Feminist Perspectives. New York University Press New York 1994, pp. 349-350.
  14. ^ Yolande Cohen: Suffrage féminin et démocratie au Canada. In: Christine Fauré (ed.): Encyclopédie Politique et Historique des Femmes. Europe, Amérique du Nord. Presses Universitaires de France Paris, 1997, ISBN 2-13-048316-X , pp. 535-550, p. 542.
  15. ↑ a b c Jad Adams; Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 280.
  16. ↑ June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , p. 55.
  17. ↑ a b - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
  18. ↑ From London Suffragette to Vancouver Suffragist: Helena Rose Gutteridge (1879–1960) “Women Suffrage and Beyond. In: womensuffrage.org. January 27, 2014, accessed March 20, 2019 .
  19. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, pp. 40–41.
  20. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 41
  21. ^ A b Yolande Cohen: Women's Suffrage and Democrac in Canada. In: Christine Fauré (ed.): Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women , Routledge New York, London, 2003, pp. 305-314, p. 309.
  22. ^ A b c Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 61.
  23. ^ Yolande Cohen: Women's Suffrage and Democrac in Canada. In: Christine Fauré (ed.): Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women , Routledge New York, London, 2003, pp. 305-314, p. 309.
  24. ↑ June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , p. 53
  25. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 203
  26. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 255.
  27. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 256.
  28. ^ "August 1960" - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
  29. ↑ "1. July 1960. “June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , p. 53.
  30. ↑ United Nations Development Program: Human Development Report 2007/2008 . New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-230-54704-9 , p. 343
  31. ^ Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, pp. 232.233
  32. ↑ a b Christine Pintat: Women's Representation in Parliaments and Political Parties in Europe and North America In: Christine Fauré (Ed.): Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women: Routledge New York, London, 2003, pp. 481–502, pp. 487.
  33. ^ A b Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 63.
  34. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 269.
  35. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 271
  36. ^ A b Joan Sangster: One Hundred Years of Struggle. The History of Women and the Vote in Canada. UBC Press Vancouver and Toronto, 2018, p. 270