Gender and the Great Experiment: ‘Feminine and Canadian Eyes’ See Soviet Women, 1926–1936
Journal: Journal of the Canadian Historical Association
Year: 2016

This article focuses on the travelogues of five educated, professional, middle-class Canadian women who visited the Soviet Union in the interwar period: Alexandrine Gibb, Margaret Gould, Agnes Macphail, Margaret McWilliams, and Ella Smith. For these visitors, Soviet women were a point of emphasis, and on this subject they claimed special insight and relative expertise. Gibb, for example, offered readers a “pair of feminine and Canadian eyes and ears ready to give you mysterious Russia.” Whatever