Canadian Women's History

3 Pages 652 Words

Kinnear defines “work” as any activity culminating in a service or product, whether or not that activity is paid. Beyond the orthodox criterion of payment, work thus includes farming, child-rearing, housework and volunteer public service. Kinnear relies on Nancy Cott’s definition of feminism—belief in equality with men, a conviction that gender roles are socially constructed, and recognition of gender consciousness—but makes it clear that prairie women in this period were especially affected by ethnicity, class, marriage, geographic location, and immigrant status. Although prairie society was predominantly British, attitudes were coloured by cultural norms from Eastern Europe. Women sometimes kept their marital status a secret, and some women of Jewish extraction hid this part of their identity. Kinnear’s use of definitions helps to show links between these various factors.
Kinnear emphasizes one essential difference between rural and urban living. Contrary to the popular assumption that farm wives had a more difficult role than women living in urban areas, she argues that rural women saw themselves as equal partners with their husbands, who well knew that the family could not survive economically without women’s work. Although urban areas saw greater mechanization of household tasks coupled with higher standards of cleanliness, women who stayed at home while their husbands went out to waged occupations were not considered equal partners.
Education and training were crucial to women who wanted to improve their status and gain access to the paid economy. Kinnear cites a number of milestones: the introduction of compulsory education (with English as the single language of instruction) in 1916; curriculum development during the interwar years to include courses in vocational education, domestic science, and home economics; and post-World War II expanded accessibility and greater standardization of educational opportunity. M...