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. In a related development, feminist athletes and activists established the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and demanded new physical opportunities for girls and women (see Feminism and Female Athletes in the 1960s, 70s and 80s).
1877: Emily Stowe established the Women’s Literacy Club, primarily a consciousness-raising group which was a forerunner of women’s suffrage organizations. [6] It was organized in Toronto in 1906 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. Yet, as Moses points out, this acknowledgement stops abruptly after 1971; the activism of youth and students was widely ignored in the historiography of women's movement in the 1970s. 1947: Canadian women who marry non-Canadian men no longer lose their citizenship. 1929: The British Privy Council overturned a Supreme Court of Canada decision and deemed women to be “persons” (and therefore eligible for appointment to the senate.). Penni Mitchell, About Canada: Women’s Rights (2015), Joan Sangster, “Creating popular histories: re-interpreting ‘second wave’ Canadian feminism,” Dialect Anthropol 39(2015), Janine Brodie, Women and Politics in Canada (1985), Clio Collective, Quebec Women: A History (1982), Meg Luxton, “Feminism as a Class Act: Working-Class Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Canada,” Labour/Le Travail 48 (2001), Wendy Robbins, et al., eds.,Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women’s Studies in Canada and Québec, 1966-1976 (2008).
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. All you girls are going to be working and you're not going to have anybody looking after them.[50][51]. Kim Campbell serves as Canada’s first woman Prime Minister for less than five months. 1912: For the first time, a woman is hired as a professor at a Canadian university. Movements also tackled women’s representation in everything from, , insisted on respect for non-mainstream identities and demanded reform of, Joan Sangster, “Creating popular histories: re-interpreting ‘second wave’ Canadian feminism,”, Meg Luxton, “Feminism as a Class Act: Working-Class Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Canada,”, Early Women’s Movements in Canada: 1867–1960, Women’s Movements in Canada: 1985–Present, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Feminism and Female Athletes in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights in Canada, Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women.