Pre-1960s Feminism Essay

While recognizing the importance of these pre-1960s historians, we usually associate the rise of women’s history with the late 1960s-1970s, inspired from the ferment of the long sixties political movement. In the context of these works, Canadian women sought greater recognition of the social, economic, legal, and political positions in society. Feminists, newly aware of forms of contemporary oppression that never before had been ‘named’, were understandably interested in explanations for oppression. The women’s movements, including the women’s labour movement, helped in the formalization of the women’s history discipline. In what Joan Sangster calls a “moment of discovery,” feminist recognized that women needed an understanding of the past …show more content…
Both Women at Work, Ontario 1850-1930 and The Neglected Majority examine groups of women, either performing a type of wage labour or groups acting for causes, ranging from the national war effort to social movements. This trend challenged existing hierarchies where women appeared to be non-entities on the historical stage. Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History: Three Hundred Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It represents such a work that attempted identify oppressive hierarchies and women’s relationship with these in Canada. Feminist and critical theories of the 1970s were influenced by a variety of modernist feminist frameworks, including those trying to understand the patriarchy. Women at Work: Ontario, 1830-1930 and The Double Ghetto: Canadian Women and their Segregated Work are two examples of works that made use of Marxist or Marxist-Feminist frameworks. These works placed interpretative emphasis on the way in which women were oppressed through systems and private