CANADIAN WORKERS IN HISTORY

An Interpretation: 1600-1975

WOMEN WORKERS UNTIL 1975

While women worked in some cases as domestic servants, they did not join the paid labour force in large numbers until after the beginning of manufacturing in the late 19th century. Traditionally, they had a crucial role for which they were not paid: that of raising children and maintaining the family.

Women working in J. Leckie Co. boot factory finishing room, 220 Cambie, Vancouver, 1923 © Vancouver Public Library, Special Collections VPL 21638

Needing an income to survive, single women began to do paid work work in the emerging factories and sweat shops after 1850. They were joined by children seeking to supplement meagre family incomes. While the participation of children in the workforce was restricted in the early 20th century, women were lured into clerical, health care, teaching, and other white collar jobs. Typically, they occupied job categories containing few men and were paid less than men for equivalent work because of the assumption that their employment status was secondary to that of male family ‘bread-winners’. Few women joined unions until after 1945, when public service unions were organized.

In the 19th century, single women and children tended to fill jobs where mechanization had diluted skill. The process led to job losses for traditionally skilled workers and the creation of new jobs requiring less skill.

Female employees, Dominion Cotton Company, Windsor, Nova Scotia © Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections

For example, females were employed to operate the sewing machines that had replaced male tailors in the clothing industry. By 1881, women and children were concentrated in the cotton and textiles industry, shoes factories, garment production, and the tobacco industry. They made up 42 percent of the industrial workforce in Montréal and 33 percent in Toronto. After 1900, the proportion of women grew while that of children declined as the provinces introduced laws establishing a minimum working age and requiring children to stay in school until the age of 16.

The number of women wage earners increased in the 20th century, mainly as a result of new white collar job categories. As new opportunities appeared in clerical, retail, teaching and other occupations, the percentage of women in the workforce, which had been 12.5 percent in 1891, rose to 16.2 percent in 1911. This proportion fluctuated during the following decades, much larger in wartime, smaller during the economic depression of the 1930s, until the end of the Second World War. After 1945, it mushroomed because of the expansion in health care and various government services. By 1971, 39.9 percent of all wage earners were female.

Through the decades between the late 19th and late 20th centuries, women faced certain constant challenges. They were usually limited to segregated job categories: certain types of work, such as clerical and retail, were regarded as “women’s work” while other categories, such as professional and managerial, remained off-limits. Their categories were poorly paid; in 1891, the average woman earned about one-third of her male counterparts. By 1971, she still earned only about one-half. There were few opportunities for advancement.

This situation was the result of assumptions about domesticity. Until the 1950s, the prevailing point of view was that paid female work would be temporary. Women might undertake jobs prior to marriage, or during public or family emergencies, but their eventual calling would be to raise families.

Women at looms, Ontario, 1908 © City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 137

The belief system can be confirmed by statistics. In recently studied industries from the 1920s, about 90 percent of the women workers were single. Wars represented public emergencies in which women were more welcome. Even then, the dictates of domesticity ruled. During the First and Second world wars, single women were recruited for the job market first, then childless married women, and, only lastly, married women with children. In spite of these barriers, married women gradually became more involved in the workforce. Their percentage relative to single women increased from about 20 percent in 1941 to 66 percent in 1971.

Until recently, female workers were largely unorganized. Traditionally, they were isolated from other workers and difficult to organize because their employment was frequently short-lived, or interrupted several times during a lifetime. Early labour organizers refused to accept women. They were ostracized by the craft unions, many of which blamed women for taking jobs formerly occupied by skilled men. The first large organization to recruit them was the Knights of Labor, which

Women building boats at Dr. Graham Bell's Laboratory, Bienn Breagh near Baddeck, Nova Scotia 1914-18 © Library and Archives Canada [LAC] , PA-24363

began accepting women in 1881. It sought to bring all workers together, but still subscribed to the prevailing philosophy that the proper place of women was in the home. This situation continued until the teachers’ unions and public service unions of the 1960s and 1970s began to mobilize large numbers of militant women. By this time, thanks to the women’s movement, females were beginning to challenge male authority both at home and in the workplace. These developments encouraged the proportion of female workers who were organized to grow from 17 to 27 percent between 1966 and the mid 1970s; this percentage was still behind male workers at 43 percent.