Women in the Workforce
The term woman at work has two different meanings when examined historically. The first meaning a historian would think of would be from the 18th century when women at work meant women working in the household. The work that women did adhered to the patriarchal structure, such as cooking, cleaning and making clothes. Around the time of World War II work for women began to mean something different. Women were entering the paid labour force specifically during 1939-1945 when they were needed the most to help men in the war. When World War II started, Canadian men and women stepped up to help the British Empire during this tough time. Although there were not very many women who participated in the war itself, we must remember that women stayed home and kept the labour force together while the war was occurring. The ideology of working women changed drastically during World War II, this was when most women started to enter the paid labour force in nursing as well as other areas of paid work and paved the path for women in the future.
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Before World War II, women were the homemakers. They stayed at home and took care of household duties for their families, but when World War II started this role became to change because most men were going to participate in the war. Before the war had started women were staying home and doing all the household duties that men assumed were only womanly jobs. “It was within family decisions that they decided who should stay home to look after the children, and do the housework and who should earn wages, commonly it was the women who stayed home and the man who made the money.”1Bradbury shows in her article that the family sphere during the war was that women stayed at home and men did the paid labour outside of the household. The roles start to change quickly and drastically once World War II started in 1939.
1.Bettina, Bradbury. “Gender at Work at Home: Family Decisions, the Labour
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Before World War II, women were the homemakers. They stayed at home and took care of household duties for their families, but when World War II started this role became to change because most men were going to participate in the war. Before the war had started women were staying home and doing all the household duties that men assumed were only womanly jobs. “It was within family decisions that they decided who should stay home to look after the children, and do the housework and who should earn wages, commonly it was the women who stayed home and the man who made the money.”1Bradbury shows in her article that the family sphere during the war was that women stayed at home and men did the paid labour outside of the household. The roles start to change quickly and drastically once World War II started in 1939.
1.Bettina, Bradbury. “Gender at Work at Home: Family Decisions, the Labour
Bibliography: Bradbury, Bettina. “Gender at Work at Home: Family Decisions, the Labour Market and Girls’ Contributions to the Family Economy” Labouring Canada. (2008) 71-89 Frager, Ruth. “No Proper Deal: Women Workers and the Canadian Labour Movement, 1870-1940. 45-60 Knowles, Valerie. “Women’s Work” Legion Magazine. May 15 2012http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2012/05/womens-work/ Nicholson. “Canada’s Nursing Sisters” McMaster University Library. http://pw20c.mcmaster.ca/case-study/angels-mercy-canada-s-nursing-sisters-world-war-i-and-ii Phimister, Euan, Esperanza Vera-Toscano and Alfons Weersink. “Female Participation and Labor Market Attachment in Rural Canada.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Volume 84, Number 1. (Feb. 2002) 210-221 Pierson, Ruth. They’re Still Women After All: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (McCelland and Stewart, 1986) Toman, Cynthia. “Front Lines and Frontiers: War as Legitimate Work for Nurses, 1939-1945”Rethinking Canada. Sixth Edition. (2011) 242-255