Download feminst movements in the americas

FEMINST MOVEMENTS IN THE AMERICAS
FEMINISM PRE-1945

A lot of feminist activism in early C20 concentrated on securing the vote for
women.

Male politicians and Church leaders believed that women had different spheres of
life.

Women belonged in the private realm of the family, of motherhood, and the
home.

Men belonged in the public realm outside of the home.

These views were shared across the Americas by Protestant Church leaders in
Canada and the USA, and by the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America and
the Canadian French-speaking province of Quebec.
FEMINIST GROUPS EMERGE

Feminist groups emerged from such organisations as literary clubs,
from which they organised themselves to propose changes in the
laws.

Lower class women in factories organised as feminists within
labour unions.

Women used a number of tactics to persuade men in power to
give them the vote. They signed petitions, enlisted supportive
legislators, worked towards securing the vote in their province,
state, or municipality, they marched and picketed, took part in
silent vigils and hunger strikes, and used the judicial system to
challenge their exclusion from voting.
FEMINIST MOVEMENTS TAKE EFFECT

Ecuador’s constitution had removed the word “male”
from its citizenship requirements in the 1896 Constitution.

In 1922 Dr Matilde Hidalgo wanted to sign up to vote, and
when she was refused for being a woman, she contested
this. As she was over 21 and literate, there was no legal
pediment in the eyes of the state, so she was able to vote
in 1925.

It was only in 1929 however, that the female vote was
incorporated into the new constitution that year after a
military dictatorial take-over.
WOMEN GRADUALLY GAIN GROUND!

In Argentina, Juan Peron – at his wife, Eva’s, insistence – gave women
the vote in the hope that they would vote for him in the following
election – which they did.

Dictatorial regimes in Brazil, Cuba, and El Salvador followed suit.

There had been feminists fighting for the vote in these countries, but
they had not had to fight as hard in these countries as in others.

Success was achieved gradually. In Canada – in Manitoba province,
women could vote and run for provincial office from 1916, but this was
not allowed in Quebec until 1940.

Women could vote all over Canada from 1918 and run for office in the
Canadian House of Commons, but not so in the Senate until 1929.

Indigenous Canadians (both men and women) could not vote without
renouncing their indigenous treaty status however, until 1960.
WOMEN GAIN GROUND IN THE USA

In 1912, only nine states in the West of the USA had granted women the vote.

In 1920, the essential three-quarters of the USA voted to amend the Constitution, and the Nineteenth
Amendment – granting the vote to women – was passed.

Indigenous men and women could not vote however, until 1924.

In some American countries, the fight to vote continued until the 1960s.

Women were realising all over the Americas however, that the right to vote did not equal equality
with men. Many laws and traditions kept women from gaining full political, economic, and social
equality.

There were more variations than similarities. Sometimes women took up very divisive causes e.g.
abortion, or less divisive ones such as the right to divorce – although this was more divisive in Chile
than the USA and Canada (divorce was only allowed in Chile in 2006).

In long-lasting democracies, women fought through feminist movements for equality under the law
with men.
FEMINISM IN CANADA

Canadian women participated in the Second World War by joining the
armed forces.

Before the war, other than the exception of the Nursing Service of the Royal
Canadian Army Medical Corps, the Canadian army was made up of men
only. By 1942 however, women were recruited into the military, air force, and
navy.

Women even served in a number of significant roles e.g. as car mechanics,
electricians, and sail makers.

In the final years of the war however, the Canadian government expected
women to go back to their roles in the home after the war was over.

Furthermore, after the war was over some of the services the government
offered working women during the war such as childcare were stopped.
INITIATIVES IN FAVOUR OF WOMEN

In the years after the war however, the number of women entering the
workforce steadily increased as women’s contribution became increasingly vital
to sustaining the home and the economy – something which was addressed by
a number of government initiatives.

In 1951, the Ontario government passed the Female Employees Fair
Remuneration Act.

By the end of the 1950s, similar legislation had been passed in every province
apart from Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador.

In 1954, the Canadian government created a specialized women’s department
within the Department of Labour, and in 1956 it also passed legislation to provide
pay equity for women working in the federal civil service.
THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE
STATUS OF WOMEN

The Royal Commission on the Status of Women was a Canadian
Royal Commission to examine the status of women and to
recommend steps that could be taken by the federal government
to ensure equal opportunities with men in every aspect of Canadian
society.

The Commission began on 16th February 1967 as an initiative of
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.

Public sessions took place the following year to listen public
comment for the Commission to consider as it formulated its
recommendations.
THE NUS AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN THE 1970s

The National Union of Students (Canada) (NUS) was formed in 1972 and became the
Canadian Federation of Students in 1981.

Student aid, education cut-backs, and tuition fees (by the late 1970s) were the main
issues of the national student organization, but there was also an undercurrent of
women student organising in the NUS and on local campuses.

Women - as well as some male supporters - rallied around issues of sexism on student
councils and in NUS such as violence against women, abortion rights and the
establishing women centres and daycare on campuses.

By 1979, the NUS established the Declaration of the Rights of the Woman Student.

The “Declaration avoided discussing other major social inclusions issues such as race,
physical ability, and aboriginal people which perhaps speaks to why issues of racism
and ability caused much discordance in the women’s movement of the 1980s.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The Battered Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada emerged mainly during
the late 1960s and early 1970s, within the framework of second wave
feminism.

Building on the much-coined second wave slogan, “the personal is political”,
second wave understandings of the state’s role in private life regulation set
the road to re-conceptualize domestic violence as a social problem rather
than a private matter.

The movement was generated mainly for women who had experienced
domestic violence.

Several feminists have criticized the Battered Women’s movement however,
for its reliance on the battered woman-as-victim archetype.
THE 1977 CANADIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACT

The 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act, which was passed by Prime Minister minister
Pierre Trudeau, gave basic rights to every human being.

There was no discrimination based on sex, race, or religion

It specified that there had to be be “equal pay for work of equal value“.

There had been significant disparity between wages received by women and men.

By the mid-1980s however, there was still disparity: full-time female employees earned
on average a mere 72% of the wages earned by men.
ABORTION

A major concern of Canadian second wave feminists in Canada was access to
abortion.

Prior to 1969, abortion was illegal and women were dying from trying to have abortions
outside of the law. For these reasons,

Therefore, abortion was legalised in 1969.

Abortion remained illegal however, unless it was first approved by a Therapeutic
Abortion Committee on health grounds. The abortion was also to be performed in a
hospital instead of a clinic.

Only one out of every five hospitals had the committee required for approving of the
operation, which led to many women crossing the border to the USA to have one.

By 1970, women all over Canada had mobilized to organise a cross-country abortion caravan
from Vancouver to Ottawa which called for increased reproductive freedom, through
increased access to abortion and birth control.

The restrictive nature of the abortion law led others to challenge it. Amongst them, Henry
Morgantaler, who was a prominent Montreal doctor who tried to establish abortion clinics.

Morgentaler was charged in 1973 under the Criminal Code for providing abortions. The case
went to the Canadian Supreme Court. In Morgentaler v R, the Court unanimously held that
the criminal law provisions were within the federal parliament’s constitutional jurisdiction. The
Court also unanimously held that the provisions did were not an infringement of the Canadian
Bill of Rights. His conviction was upheld.

Ten years later, after the passage of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
Morgentaler was convicted again under the abortion provision.

On this occasion, when the case reached the Supreme Court, he was successful, in R. v.
Morgentaler in 1988.

The Court ruled, by a 5-2 majority, that the abortion provision of the Criminal Code violated
the Charter’s guarantee of security of the person. There was no single majority decision.
Justice Bertha Wilson, the first female on the Supreme Court (appointed in 1982) wrote one of
the strongest opinions striking down the provision.
FEMINISM IN THE USA

In the USA in 1960, the woman’s was limited in virtually every
respect, from family life to the workplace.

A woman was expected to follow one path: marriage in her early
20s, to quickly start a family, and devote her life to homemaking.

She therefore belonged to her husband and children.

The 38 percent of American women who worked in 1960 were
mainly limited to jobs like teaching, nursing, or working as
secretaries. Women were mainly unwelcome in professional
programs.
A MOVE FROM THE STATUS QUO

The feminist movement of the 1960s and '70s focused at first on
dismantling workplace inequality like denial of access to better jobs
and salary inequity, via anti-discrimination laws.

In 1964, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia proposed to add a
prohibition on gender discrimination to the Civil Rights Act that was
under consideration at the time.

He was met by laughter from other, Congressmen.

With leadership from Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan
however, the law was passed with the amendment intact.
THE AMERICAN FEMINISTS

It soon became clear that the newly established Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission was not going to enforce the law's protection of women workers.

A group of feminists including Betty Friedan therefore, decided to start an
organisation to fight gender discrimination through the courts and legislatures.

In the summer of 1966, they launched the National Organization for Women
(NOW), which went on to lobby Congress for pro-equality laws and help women
seeking legal aid as they fought against workplace discrimination in the courts.

The movement popularised the idea that "the personal is political" — that
women's political inequality had equally important personal ramifications,
encompassing their relationships, sexuality, birth control and abortion, clothing
and image of the body, and roles within marriage, housework and childcare.

The different wings of the feminist movement as such, sought women's equality
on both a political and personal level.
A SPLIT IN THE FEMINIST MOVEMENTS

Over the course of the 1970s, the movements split along the lines of
class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and even the Cold War!

In Canada, some feminist groups were campaigning for more extreme
things than others.

In the USA in the 1980s there was a back-lash as the feminist agenda
was seen by some to try to destroy the traditional family unit.

1984 saw ‘feminism’ versus ‘traditionalism’ when Regan ran for his
second term as President, and his opponent’s running mate (Walter
Mondale), was a woman – Geraldine Ferraro – the first female running
mate in US History.
FEMINISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Latin American countries were led by authoritarian, Conservative governments.

The Roman Catholic Church was also very prevalent in politics there.

Women could enter the professions but could not reach decision-making levels.

Women who believed in feminism organised themselves in muted form – sometimes
under the the aegis of political parties.

In Argentina, Chile, and Brazil – women formed social movements to seek answers about
their ‘disappeared’ loved ones.

Owing to conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean, women’s movements there
have been ore focused on improving conditions for their families, and not recognise
themselves as feminists.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

MAMAUX, A et al, History of the Americas 1880-1981, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2015, pp.468-475

https://pediaview.com/openpedia/Feminism_in_Canada#Canadia
n_women_during_and_after_World_War_II

https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feministmovement-breaking-down-barriers-women

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Feminism_in_Canada