In today's Canada, women are an integral part of the labour force across every sector. Although women are still not equally represented in the C-suite (CEO, CFO, CMO) and childbirth/rearing may hinder a promotion, under the law, women have equal rights to men.
Many young folks these days may take rights for granted, but it took decades of hard-fought struggle for a woman to be treated equally as a person and working person in Canada.
Award-winning journalist and author Karin Wells is once again bringing to light the lives and legal trials of a group of women integral to the advancement of women’s rights in Canada, with her book titled, Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Women's Rights in Canada.
"They are all stories about women's rights that have progressed over time," said Wells, in an interview with the Peak. "There is a general sort of feeling in the air that rights, in general, could well be threatened."
Wells said she wanted to emphasize in the book that society needs to keep its eye on the ball when it comes to protecting and guaranteeing these rights. Especially, said Wells, because of what we are seeing south of the border in the United States.
"It's not going to happen tomorrow, but it's that emphasis that we're hearing all the time about transactional dealings, that you always have to get something back for whatever you give," said Wells. "Rights aren't like that; rights are just guaranteed."
The women featured in the book: Eliza Campbell, Chantale Daigle, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell and Stella Bliss often had no idea what they were facing in the courts, or the price they would have to pay, said Wells.
Pat Christie, whose surname was Barter at the time, now lives in the qathet region and is one of those women who fought the law to advance women's rights in Canada.
"I was sufficiently familiar with a lot of cases; some I had to search for and choose, like the Stella Bliss case, which is one that involves Pat," said Wells. "I wanted a case out of BC, and this is a case that was about as big as it gets. What started with the right to maternity benefits ended up years later being the case that pushed everyone to redefine equality under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."
The charter was signed into law in 1982 and protects the fundamental rights of Canadians, including: democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality rights, official language rights and minority language educational rights. The charter also allows individuals to challenge government actions that are believed to violate rights or freedoms.
It all started with a really basic claim," said Pat. "This was a woman [Bliss] who was pregnant and wanted her mat [maternity] benefits, which were new at the time."
Christie became involved with the Service, Office and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada, which was an independent union, established in 1972. The intention was to represent and organize occupations who were not included in the traditional trade unions of the time.
"We were looking at bank workers, office workers in general, restaurants, day-care workers, small offices, like legal lawyers offices," said Christie. "We were leafleting downtown Vancouver; we'd go out on the streets in the mornings when offices were going in and hand out leaflets."
At the time, women in these types of workplaces had little job security, no maternity leave and no day care support if they had children.
"Most union contracts didn't even address it [maternity leave] and the Unemployment Insurance Act didn't address it," said Christie. "So it seemed natural, it seemed right and it seemed like a really good issue to bring up to people."
Christie said as a young person she was influenced by the Chicago 7 trial in the United States, which saw anti-Vietnam war activists stand trial for being linked to inciting riots that took place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
"You have to keep in mind that Vancouver, in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, was one of the most politically active places in the country," said Wells. "Some women got really active in the labour movement, because women's issues were not of concern to most unions, because up until then, not that many women had been working."
However, Wells said many of these cases, such as the Bliss case, took years of appeal and many of them often failed.
"So, there were all these layers of appeals, and by about the third or fourth layer of appeal, they had to decide," added Wells. "They had to decide whether they were going to appeal this to the Supreme Court, and they decided they would."
Wells said judges at the Supreme Court said, "No, she wasn't discriminated against because she was a woman."
The court held that women were not entitled to benefits denied to them by the Unemployment Insurance Act during a certain period of pregnancy. This decision angered women's rights activists and the ruling was eventually overturned.
"Some individual women took the initiative, like the woman from Alberta who was fighting for half the ranch, Irene Murdoch," said Wells. "She was just an ornery, stubborn woman who'd been beaten up and was in a really terrible state."
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that Murdoch was not owed, as part of her divorce settlement, any part of the 480-acre cattle ranch she ran with her husband for 25 years. The outcry from women's groups to the ruling eventually produced reforms and she later obtained a settlement of $65,000.
"These were very brave women," said Wells. "It was a time when there was a lot of support within society for those things."
Wells said the challenge with writing the book was tracking down people like Christie who were involved in the cases.
"What I would say to young women these days is, if they are working but they don't have a union, they should really look at what's going on around the world," said Christie. "They need to think about it holistically, not about their own immediate situation, but connect their situations to what's happening to men and women in other parts of the world."
Wells said she has a daughter who is 40 years old and is concerned for the younger generation.
"To her and many others, it's as though there is an assumption that they [rights] will always be there," said Wells. "But we need to keep our eye on the ball."
Wells emphasized that women have to stand up, which sometimes means doing things that aren't polite, and that there's nothing wrong with that.
For more information, go to 49thshelf.com/Books/W/Women-Who-Woke-up-the-Law
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