The Famous Five

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Memorial to the Famous Five in Calgary by Barbara Paterson. An identical statue sits on Parliament Hill in Canada's capital Ottawa .

The Famous Five (German: the famous five ) were five women in 1927 the Supreme Court of Canada and later the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council questioned whether "women are people?". The case, known in Canada as the Persons Case , ended with the Supreme Court ruling that women were not persons within the meaning of the law, but the Privy Council in London overturned this.

The women (all from Alberta ) were:

The exact question the five women asked the court was whether the Constitution Act of 1867 allowed women to become members of the Canadian Senate . There it says: "The Governor General shall ... summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and ... every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator." ( The governor general should ... appoint qualified persons to the Senate ... and every person appointed should become and be a member of the Senate. )

In Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) [1930] SCR 276, the Supreme Court ruled that the phrase "persons" applied only to men. He justified this with the fact that:

  • the legislators who passed the law had no women in mind when they passed it,
  • the language of the law uses the masculine personal pronoun he all the time when speaking of senators.

The Famous Five appealed to the Justice Committee of the Privy Council in London, then the highest court of appeal for the entire British Empire outside of Great Britain. This decided on October 18, 1929 ( Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) [1930] AC 124 (PC)) that women are actually persons within the meaning of the law and called the exclusion of women a "relic of more barbaric times". The verdict was binding on the entire British Empire; only not within the British Isles, so the question of whether women could sit in the House of Lords remained controversial for several years.

The importance of the five women in Canada is still controversial to this day. While they are considered a major national symbol of women's equality, others are upset about their broader political attitudes, such as immigration and their campaign to legislate eugenics . At the same time, they doubt the significance of the case as the Canadian Senate was a politically insignificant body in the 1920s.

The Famous Five are immortalized on the $ 50 bill , as is a memorial in Calgary and on Parliament Hill . There is a memorial plaque in the entrance area of ​​the Canadian Senate as well as in the Olympic Plaza in Calgary in their home province of Alberta. Edmonton named five parks after the Famous Five.

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