Continuity or Change: Canadian Women and the Second World War with Dr. Jeff Keshen
In the summer of 1943, nearly four years into Canada’s participation in the Second World War, Mary Etta Macpherson, who had taken over as editor of Chatelaine, Canada’s most widely circulated women’s magazine, wrote: “We hope some of those bright college girls, soon to troop back for the fall term, will write a thesis on ‘What War Has Done to Improve the Lot of Canadian Women.’” More than one million Canadian women joined the wartime workforce, often in positions that had been the exclusive domain of men, and some 50,000 enlisted in auxiliary services of Canada's three military branches. Academic debate has centred on the degree to which these new, and typically temporary, trends precipitated longer term change towards gender equity, a question this presentation will contextualize and seek to answer. (Recorded November 18, 2021)