Fighting for women's equality, the federal Women's Bureau, 1945-1967 : an example of early state feminism in Canada

Abstract

This study examines the ideas and activities of the federal Women's Bureau from 1945, when it was first proposed, to 1967 when the first Director retired. The significant increase in women's labour force participation after the Second World War, particularly amongst married women, precipitated the creation of this small agency within the federal Labour Department to compile information and prepare studies about the female labour force. Under the leadership of the first Director, Marion Royce, the Women's Bureau produced an impressive collection of publications analyzing the experiences and problems of wage earning women and providing vocational information. Utilizing the discourse of human rights and equality of opportunity which characterized the postwar period, Marion Royce represented the problems of women's employment as issues of equality. Around 1960, the Bureau began to develop and advocate for policies to facilitate equal opportunity for women in the labour force, in particular for improved vocational training, revision to the equal pay law, and provisions for maternity protection and child care.

This study assesses the impact of the Bureau on the representation of women's problems as wage earners and on the development of policies to address these issues. The Women's Bureau is conceptualized within this thesis as the first women's policy agency within the federal government. During the time of the study, women's issues were not part of the government's agenda, nor was the Bureau formed to address equality issues. Yet, the creation of the Bureau marked the beginning of the institutional representation of women's interests within the federal government. Consequently, this thesis draws on recent studies exploring the implication of "state feminism," in particular the relationship between feminist bureaucrats within the state and organized women seeking equality outside of the state, the limitations imposed on feminist demands by the structural, political, and discursive limits of the state, and the construction of "meaning" and of "issues" in the policy process. It is argued that the Women's Bureau, in these first years, played a definitive role in the gradual definition by the state of the problem of women's employment as one of inequality, a conceptualization which structured the development of equity legislation directed towards wage earning women.