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WGST 362/HIST 362: Constructing Women and Men in Canada: A History Since Industrialization Report a Broken Link

History/Women’s and Gender Studies 362: Constructing Women and Men in Canada: A History Since Industrialization explores the ways social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental forces have contributed to the gendering of women and men in Canada from the onset of industrialization in the nineteenth century to the present. It considers the dynamics behind the construction of different masculinities and femininities at different moments in Canada’s past and shows how these constructions have created, enforced, and reinforced particular ways of imagining the opportunities and limitations afforded women and men in Canadian society. It also shows how women and men in Canada have challenged these constructions and, in the process, fashioned wholly different conceptions of gendered roles for their own ends.

Video

Introduction [video]

Unit 1: Industrialization, Urbanization, and the Gendering of Canadian History, Industrialization to 1900

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–1075.
Sangster, Joan. “Beyond Dichotomies: Re-Assessing Gender History and Women’s History in Canada.” left history 3, no. 1 (1995): 109–121.
Boydston, Jeanne. “Gender as a Question of Historical Analysis.” Gender and History 20, no. 3 (2008): 558–583.
Bradbury, Bettina. “Pigs, Cows, and Boarders: Non-Wage Forms of Survival among Montreal Families, 1861–91.” Labour/Le Travail 14 (1984): 9–46.
Perry, Adele. “Hardy Backwoodsmen, Wholesome Women, and Steady Families: Immigration and the Construction of a White Society in Colonial British Columbia, 1849–1871.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 33, no. 66 (2000): 343–360.
Harvey, Kathryn. “Amazons and Victims: Resisting Wife-Abuse in Working-Class Montréal, 1869–1879.” Canadian Historical Association Journal 2, no. 1 (1991): 131–148.
McLean, Lorna. “‘Deserving’ Wives and ‘Drunken’ Husbands: Wife Beating, Marital Conduct, and the Law in Ontario, 1850–1910.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 35, no. 69 (2002): 59–81.
Morton, Suzanne. “Separate Spheres in a Separate World: African-Nova Scotian Women in Late-19th-Century Halifax County.” Acadiensis 22, no. 2 (1993): 61–83.
Loo, Tina. “Of Moose and Men: Hunting for Masculinities in British Columbia, 1880–1939.” Western Historical Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2001): 296–319.

Unit 2: Immigration, Militarism, and the End of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1900–1918

Carter, Sarah. “Britishness, ‘Foreignness,’ Women and Land in Western Canada, 1890s–1920s.” In “Britishness and Whiteness: Locating Marginal White Identities in the Empire,” special issue, Humanities Research 13, no. 1 (2006).
Kelm, Mary-Ellen. “Manly Contests: Rodeo Masculinities at the Calgary Stampede.” Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 4 (2009): 711–751.
Chaktsiris, Mary G. “‘Our Boys with the Maple Leaf on Their Shoulders and Straps’: Masculinity, the Toronto Press, and the Outbreak of the South African War, 1899.” War & Society 32, no. 1 (2013): 3–25.
Glassford, Sarah. “‘The Greatest Mother in the World’: Carework and the Discourse of Mothering in the Canadian Red Cross Society during the First World War.” Journal of Motherhood Initiative 10, no. 1 (2008): 219–232.
Tillotson, Shirley. “‘We May All Soon Be “First Class Men’: Gender and Skill in Canada’s Early Twentieth Century Urban Telegraph Industry.” Labour/Le Travail 27 (Spring 1991): 97–125.
Myers, Tamara. “The Voluntary Delinquent: Parents, Daughters, and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1918.” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 2 (1999): 242–268.
Dubinsky, Karen and Franca Iacovetta. “Murder, Womanly Virtue, and Motherhood: The Case of Angelina Napolitano, 1911–1922.” Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 505–531.

Unit 3: Gender between the Wars, 1918–1945

Erickson, Lesley A. “‘A Very Garden of the Lord’? Hired Hands, Farm Women, and Sex Crime Prosecutions on the Prairies, 1914–1929.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 12 (2001): 115–136.
Heron, Craig. “Boys Will Be Boys: Working-Cass Masculinities in the Age of Mass Production.” International Labor and Working-Class History 69, no. 1 (2006): 6–34.
Hogeveen, Bryan. “‘You Will Hardly Believe I Turned Out So Well’: Parole, Surveillance, Masculinity, and the Victoria Industrial School, 1896–1935.” Histoire Social/Social History 37, no. 74 (2004): 201–227.
Alexander, Kristine. “The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism during the 1920s and 1930s.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 1 (2009): 37–63.
Strong-Boag, Veronica. “The Girl of the New Day: Working Women in the 1920s.” Labour/Le Travail 4 (1979): 131–164.
Lewchuk, Wayne A. “Men and Monotony: Fraternalism as a Managerial Strategy at the Ford Motor Company.” Journal of Economic History 53, no. 4 (1993): 824–856.
Strikwerda, Eric. “‘Married Men Should, I Feel, Be Treated Differently’: Work, Relief, and Unemployed Men on the Urban Canadian Prairie, 1929–1932.” left history 12, no. 1 (2007): 30–51.
Srigley, Katrina. “‘In Case You Hadn’t Noticed!’: Race, Ethnicity, and Women’s Wage-Earning in a Depression-Era City.” Labour/Le Travail 55 (Spring 2005): 69–105.
Smith, Helen, and Pamela Wakewich. “‘Beauty and the Helldivers’: Representing Women’s Work and Identities in a Warplant Newspaper.” Labour/Le Travail 44 (Fall 1999): 71–107.
Hayes, Geoffrey, and Kirk W. Goodlet. “Exploring Masculinity in the Canadian Army Officer Corps, 1939–45.” Journal of Canadian Studies 48, no. 2 (2014): 40–69.

Unit 4: Refashioning Gender for a Postwar World, 1945–1975

Gleason, Mona. “Psychology and the Construction of the ‘Normal’ Family in Postwar Canada, 1945–60.” Canadian Historical Review 78, no. 3 (1997): 442–477.
Fahrni, Magda. “Counting the Costs of Living: Gender, Citizenship, and a Politics of Prices in 1940s Montreal.” Canadian Historical Review 83, no. 4 (2002): 483–504.
Parr, Joy. “What Makes Washday Less Blue? Gender, Nation, and Technology Choice in Postwar Canada.” Technology and Culture 38, no. 1 (1997): 153–186.
Dummitt, Chris. “Finding a Place for Father: Selling the Barbecue in Postwar Canada.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 9, no. 1 (1998): 209–223.
Loch-Drake, Cynthia. “A Special Breed: Packing Men and the Class and Racial Politics of Manly Discourses in Post-1945 Edmonton, Alberta.” Atlantis 32, no. 1 (2007): 136–147.
Wright, Miriam. “Young Men and Technology: Government Attempts to Create a ‘Modern’ Fisheries Workplace in Newfoundland, 1949–1970.” Labour/Le Travail 42 (Fall 1998): 143–159.
Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 1945–60.” Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 471–504.
Rutherdale, Robert. “Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Good Life During Canada’s Baby Boom, 1945–1965.” Journal of Family History 23, no. 3 (1999): 351–373.
Iacovetta, Franca. “The Sexual Politics of Moral Citizenship and Containing ‘Dangerous’ Foreign Men in Cold War Canada, 1950s–1960s.” Histoire Social-Social History 33, no. 66 (2000): 361–389.

Unit 5: Gender toward the Twenty-First Century

Carstairs, Catherine, and Nancy Janovicek. “The Dangers of Complacency: Women’s History/Gender History in Canada in the Twenty-First Century.” Women’s History Review 27, no. 1 (2018): 29–40.
Lawrence, Bonita. “Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and the United States: An Overview.” Hypatia 18, no. 2 (2003): 3–31.
Cranford, Cynthia J., Leah F. Vosko, and Nancy Zukewich. “The Gender of Precarious Employment in Canada.” Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations 58, no. 3 (2003): 454–482.
Man, Guida. “Gender, Work, and Migration: Deskilling Chinese Immigrant Women in Canada.” Women’s Studies International Forum 27, no. 2 (2004): 135–148.
Jackson, Steven. “Globalization, Corporate Nationalism, and Masculinity in Canada: Sport, Molson Beer Advertising, and Consumer Citizenship.” Sport in Society 17, no. 7 (2014): 901–916.