page_title: Feminism in Canada
section_title: Early organizing and activism
hierarchical_section_title: Feminism in Canada / Waves of Canadian feminism / First wave / Early organizing and activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Edith Archibald Halifax Nova Scotia
context_page_description: The history of feminism in Canada has been a gradual struggle aimed at establishing equal rights. The history of Canadian feminism, like modern Western feminism in other countries, has been divided by scholars into four "waves", each describing a period of intense activism and social change. The use of "waves" has been critiqued for its failure to include feminist activism of, for example, Aboriginal and Québécois women who organized for changes in their own communities as well as for larger social change..
context_section_description: Religion was an important factor in the early stages of the Canadian women's movement. Some of the earliest groups of organized women came together for a religious purpose.  When women were rejected as missionaries by their Churches and missionary societies, they started their own missionary societies and raised funds to send female missionaries abroad. Some of them raised enough to train some of their missionaries as teachers or doctors.
  The first of these missionary societies was founded in Canso, Nova Scotia, in 1870 by a group of Baptist women inspired by Hannah Norris, a teacher who wanted to be a missionary.  Norris asked the women in her Church for help when her application to the Baptist Foreign Mission Board was rejected. The formed their own missionary society, and soon there were Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican women missionary societies forming across the western provinces, Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes.  These new societies not only enabled women to work as missionaries, they also gave women the opportunity to manage the funding, training and employment of female missionaries in foreign countries.
  Women's religious organizing was also a means through which women could advocate social change. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, for example, was formed in 1874 by Letitia Youmans of Picton, Ontario, in order to raise awareness of the negative consequences of alcohol consumption on society, and ultimately to ban alcohol and promote evangelical family values. Inspired by its American counterpart, the WCTU grew to become one of the first organizations to fight for suffrage while also being a training ground for future suffrage leaders. The Hebrew Ladies Sewing Circle (founded 1869) also worked to promote social change through religion-inspired organizing. It was originally organized by Ida Siegel to provide girls in their community training in sewing skills and as a response to the conversion attempts of Jewish youth by Protestant Evangelicals in Toronto grew to establish a Jewish Endeavour Sewing School where they taught girls sewing, Jewish religion and history. Other examples include the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) which provided (and continues to provide) services such as reception centres, shelters, and educational programs for single working class women along with The Girls’ Friendly Society (Anglican-based), the Catholic Women's League, and the Grey Nuns of Montreal who provided daycare centres for working women.
  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women in Canada were also making inroads into various professions including teaching, journalism, social work, and public health. Grace Annie Lockhart became the first woman in the British Empire to receive a bachelor's degree, providing clear evidence of the justice of women's claim to full rights in the field of higher education. Advances included the establishment of a Women's Medical College in Toronto (and in Kingston, Ontario) in 1883, attributed in part to the persistence of Emily Stowe, the first female doctor to practice in Canada. Stowe's daughter, Augusta Stowe-Gullen, became the first woman to graduate from a Canadian medical school.
  Women also established and became involved with organizations to advance women's rights, including suffrage. In 1893, the National Council of Women of Canada was formed which was designed to bring together representatives of different women's groups across Canada, providing a network for women to communicate their concerns and ideas. When they endorsed suffrage, in 1910, the NCWC did so on the basis that women had an indispensable role in society which should give them the right to participate in public life by electing their government, in keeping with the maternal feminism prevalent in the period.
  During World War I, women took on not only traditionally feminine jobs, but also heavy work such as in munitions factories.  This changed role of women increased women's political prominence, and issues such as women's suffrage were raised.
  During the 1920s, women adventurers pushed
caption: Edith Archibald
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