In 1974 women were given the right to have their own credit card. It is only in the last 50 years that women have been free to control their own spending decisions.
Although women in Canada could open a bank account without their husband’s signature beginning in 1964 if they wanted a credit card they could be subjected to a battery of intrusive questions like whether they were married or planned to have children.
If a woman was married she could get a credit card along with her husband but……… if she was single, divorced or widowed she had to find another man to cosign her credit card application form.
Woman using a credit card in the 1970s- photo from IBM
Women were treated more like children who weren’t capable of controlling their own money or making their own decisions about their personal finances. It was a way to keep them under a man’s control.
I need to remember that within my lifetime women were excluded from having personal control of their finances. Women’s current financial independence should not be taken for granted. It is a right that requires vigilant protection.
In some places in our world women’s rights are moving backwards instead of forwards and we must never assume that couldn’t happen in Canada too.
My stomach roiled and my mind reeled when I read in the Toronto Globe and Mail on Tuesday that the Taliban in Afghanistan plans to return to the practice of publicly stoning women for crimes of morality.
Woman Caught in Adultery-2015- by Bulgarian artist Julia Stankova
It made me think of the story in the Bible in John 8 where Jesus intervenes in the planned stoning of a woman for adultery.
Woman Taken in Adultery by Rembrandt 1644
Jesus is in the temple teaching a crowd of people when the Pharisees and teachers of the law approach bringing with them a woman caught in the act of adultery.
Christ and the Woman Caught in Adultery by Peter Paul Ruebens
The Pharisees say that according to the law of Moses, the punishment for adultery is being stoned to death. They ask whether Jesus agrees with that.
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Pieter Bruegel- 1600
Jesus writes something on the ground.
Woman Taken in Adultery by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri1621
Then he invites anyone in the crowd who has never sinned to cast the first stone.
One by one each person walks away until only Jesus and the accused woman are left.
Jesus stands up, looks around and asks the woman where everyone has gone. Has no one remained behind to condemn her and carry out the applicable sentence?
She says no one is left to condemn her.
Jesus tells her she is free to leave and begin a new life.
We can teach and learn. Deborah Ellis has written a trilogy of books beginning with The Bread Winner that can introduce young people to the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan. I used them often in my classrooms.
But………. after reading a great many articles online about the situation I have to admit that everyone from the United Nations to Human Rights Watch to the aid organization I support Mennonite Central Committee says the situation is dire. There are so many roadblocks in the way that it seems little can be done to stop the appalling treatment of women in Afghanistan.
The latest puzzle I did really hit the sweet spot! It was not too easy and not too hard. I had such a good time doing it!
I bought it for $1 at the Winnipeg Thrift Shop where I volunteer. I was worried that some of the pieces might be missing. But they were all there!
The puzzle had a wonderful picture featuring five different women who made history.
Malala Yousafzai was the youngest person to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize. She is from Pakistan and has become an international spokeswomen advocating for the education of girls around the world.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was the first Jewish woman to serve as an American Supreme Court Justice. She authored majority opinions on many ground breaking cases that gave women equal rights, ended discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities, recognized the land rights of Indigenous Americans and protected the environment.
Rosa Parks was a prominent civil rights activist who provided leadership by example during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. She became an international symbol of resistance to racial segregation.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She promoted commercial air travel, wrote best selling books about her flying experiences and helped to found an organization for female pilots.
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist who used a network of safe houses she helped establish called the Underground Railway to help more than 70 slaves escape to freedom. She served as a scout and spy for the Northern army during the Civil War and was an activist for women’s suffrage.
I LOVED doing this colourful puzzle featuring women who are an inspiration and an example to me. I’m bringing this puzzle back to Winnipeg because I think I might just do it again in the future.
It’s great to be on holidays and have time for puzzling and painting and reading and other more leisurely pursuits.
When I lived in Asia I visited two different homes that were owned by Dr. Sun Yat Sen the first President of China- one in Macau and another in Shanghai.
At the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Museum in Hong Kong
I also visited a museum that told the story of his life in Hong Kong.
One of the things I learned about Dr. Sun Yat Sen was that just months after he took office as President he outlawed foot-binding, a practice that had begun around 1200.
Bound feet- photo from Creative Commons
Mothers would break the four smallest toes on their daughters’ feet when they were five years old. The feet were bound tightly for the next ten years. This painful process frequently led to infection and even death among young girls. Small feet were difficult to walk on and ensured that women remained helpless and dependent on their husbands.
Still, small feet were considered beautiful. Mothers knew that if they didn’t bind their daughters’ feet, they would never find husbands. Dr Sen’s own mother always walked with a cane because her feet had been bound. He begged his mother not to bind his sister’s feet.
Statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen I photographed in Shanghai
When Yat-Sen banned footbinding, women’s lives changed radically. It was the first step toward women gaining the freedom to get an education and to become more involved in the life of their nation.
In an article in The Atlantic Antonio Malchik says foot binding is just one of many methods used in different societies throughout history to control women’s physical movement—along with their rights as citizens and their legal status as human beings.
Photo of woman in a corset from the Boston Public Library
Other examples of trying to control women’s bodies was the expectation in the 18th century they’d wear corsets, the female genital mutilation that is still going on in many places in the world, and women being encouraged to wear high heels at work as they are in Japan.
I think the modern day cosmetic industry and fashion industry and diet industry also put enormous pressure on women to change their shape and their appearance, sometimes in ways that are not very healthy.
Footbinding sounds barbaric to us, but thinking about the ancient practice can remind us that we still live in a time when our expectations for what we think is ‘beautiful’ in women can act as a way to control them and limit their opportunities.
Yesterday November 25th was the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
A Globe and Mail story reported that one woman is killed by an intimate or former intimate partner every six days in Canada.
44 per cent – of Canadian women report having been subjected to some form of intimate partner violence and are disproportionately the victims of the most severe forms of abuse.
Approximately 3,500 women and 2,700 children live in shelters for abused women every night of the year in Canada while more are turned away because there is no room.
The media coverage I heard yesterday about violence against women reminded me of something that happened in Canada just forty years ago.
Margaret Mitchell speaks in the House of Commons. Photo by Andy Clark -Canadian Press
On May 12, 1982, NDP health critic Margaret Mitchell rose in the Canadian House of Commons to address the issue of domestic abuse. As a member of the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs Mitchell had been hearing story after story from battered women who at the time had no legal recourse to hold their abusive partners accountable and no safe places in the community to escape them.
During question period Margaret Mitchell asked the Liberal Minister for the Status of Women Judy Erola what the government was going to do to address this crisis.
“One in ten Canadian husbands beat their wives regularly,” said Mitchell. Hearing that the predominantly male House of Commons erupted in laughter.
Yes! Laughter!
Then Tory members of the house began to heckle Mitchell.
Photo of Judy Erola Liberal Cabinet Minister- 1983 from the Toronto Star
Erola rose to tell the men she did not find their behavior amusing and neither did the women of Canada. She promised to provide funding for more transitional housing.
Margaret then asked the Solicitor General to mandate that the courts treat spousal abuse as a criminal act. Of the more than 10,000 charges laid by abused Canadian wives up to that point only two had resulted in convictions.
The next day Ms. Mitchell introduced a formal motion asking that the members of the House of Commons who had laughed at her and heckled her apologize. It was defeated.
What happened in the Canadian House of Commons in 1982 helps to explain why it was necessary to establish a day to raise awareness about violence against women.
It would be nice if we didn’t need a day like that. We can only hope that someday we won’t.
I’m watching the latest season of New Amsterdam a Netflix series about a large hospital in New York. In an episode I saw yesterday the emergency apartment was inundated by wedding guests suffering various injuries after an explosion.
As the plot unwinds we find out a little ten- year-old girl who the doctors had assumed was a flower girl at the wedding was actually the bride.
The episode ends with the shocking revelation that the girl’s 15 year-old brother tried to stop the wedding by creating the explosion that injured the guests. One of the doctors explains that in some American states there are no laws against a girl of ten being married.
Unicef says child marriage is a problem world wide. Every year some 12 million girls, including some in the United States and Europe find themselves forced into child marriages for cultural or economic reasons.
Michelle Obama, Amal Clooney and Melinda French Gates– photo from The Hill
I follow both Michelle Obama and Melinda French Gates on social media and have been reading this week that these two influential women are teaming up with well known human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to try to put an end to child marriage for girls.
Girls marrying young has dire consequences. Child brides are more likely to leave school, experience violence, struggle to earn an income, have an unintended pregnancy, and suffer a miscarriage or die during pregnancy.
Melinda French Gates, Michelle Obama and Amal Clooney have written a joint Time Magazine OpEd in which they explain that they are supporting three initiativesto try to end child marriage. In each case they are partnering with local agencies and institutions.
Their first goal is to support female led fights to get countries to pass laws prohibiting child marriage.
A second is a campaign to convince families that child marriage is not a good idea.
A third is to get more girls into school. When girls in a country are educated they tend not to be involved in child marriages, their country’s economy improves and when they do eventually start a family their babies are born healthier.
Gates, Obama and Clooney at a girls’ school in Malawi
This weekMelinda French Gates, Michelle Obama and Amal Clooneyhave been in Malawi visiting schools for girlsthat are funded by various organizations supported by the three women. These organizations provide girls with scholarships, mentorships, and afterschool programming.
“Making sure girls finish school is one of the best ways to counter child marriage and help girls reach their fullest potential,” Michelle Obama says.
I admire Melinda French Gates, Michelle Obama and Amal Clooney. They are three very powerful and wealthy women who could be spending their time and money on all kinds of selfish pursuits but instead they are teaming up to address a problem that is vital for the creation of a better world, one in which there are equal opportunities for all young women.
A number of years ago when I was still working as a mentor for education students at the University of Winnipeg I sat in on a high school chemistry lesson where a student of mine was introducing his grade nine class to some of the great chemists in history.
They were all men!
When I asked him if there weren’t any female chemists he might have mentioned he wasn’t sure where to find information about them.
Jess Wade
That shouldn’t be a problem anymore because as I learned from watching a story on the CBS Sunday morning show in January a dedicated young scientist named Jess Wade has made it her personal mission to write 1,750 Wikipedia pages for female scientists who have made important contributions to their field but have been overlooked.
Jess is an award-winning 33-year-old British physicist who began writing articles for Wikipedia about female scientists in 2017. In an interview with the Washington Post she said, “not only are there not enough women in science, but we also aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we already have.”
Some of the women Jess has profiled are Dr Sarah Gilbert, an Oxford vaccinologist who helped develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and has had an honorary Barbie doll created in her likeness.
Jess has written about Kim Cobb an environmental scientist doing groundbreaking work on how climate change is affecting oceans
She created a Wikipedia entry for Ijeoma Uchegbu who is researching among other things how nanotechnology can be used to treat brain tumours.
A Canadian female scientist Jess has researched and written about is Ann Makosinski who invented the thermoelectric flashlight.
I learned from the CBS profile of Jess Wade that only about 20% of the biographies on Wikipedia are of women.
But………. a group of editorsand writersfrom around the world called Women in Red is working hard to change that by adding biographies of women who have made important contributions in many different fields throughout history.
My grade two class at Sir John Franklin School with our teacher Miss Ushey on the far right. I amstanding in the back row on the far left, next to our principal Hannah Fisher.
When I was in grade two I attended Sir John Franklin School in Winnipeg. It was torn down in 1991 but I have distinct memories of my time there, my friends at the school, and my teacher Miss Ushey.
Standing outside Sir John Franklin School with my younger sister Kaaren
Since I have used Sir John Franklin School as a setting in my upcoming novel Sixties Girl, I started researching the explorer Sir John Franklin for whom the school was named when it opened its doors in 1921.
Sir John Franklin- Wikipedia image
I wondered why you would name a school after a man who essentially failed at the most important mission he was asked to carry out – to find the Northwest Passage. He never did. All the men on his expedition died and the two ships he commanded for the trip both sank.
So why did he attain a heroic place in history that led educational authorities in Winnipeg to name a school after him? Good question.
Lady Jane Griffin Franklin
Well, it turns out that the reputation and legacy of Sir John Franklin were protected and fiercely defended by his wife Jane, who some of her biographers insist, singlehandedly turned her husband from a failure into one of England’s noblest heroes.
Painting of the doomed Franklin expedition by William Thomas Smith
Jane was a world traveller herself and used her money and influence and writing skills to make her husband and his doomed mission legendary…. even though John Franklin was anything but a dashing hero. According to one biographer Sir John was old and unfit and a bit of a thorn in the side of naval authorities when he set sail in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage and subsequently perished.
Jane financed five different missions to find her lost husband and these voyages made such a major contribution to the mapping of the Arctic that Jane was awarded a special medal by the Royal Geographical Society.
John Rae speaking with the Inuit in the Boothia Peninsula -artwork from the Hudsons Bay Company History Foundation
In 1854 explorer Dr John Rae, who was on one of the missions to look for the lost Franklin expedition found evidence the crew members had resorted to cannabilism before they died. He learned a great deal about the expedition from his contacts with local Inuit people.
Lady Jane Franklin worked tirelessly to shift the narrative so that this story was discredited. She enlisted the help of author Charles Dickens to have Dr Rae’s reputation sullied and have him ostracized from society.
Dr. Simon May examines the bones of Franklin expedition sailors which prove the crew resorted to cannabalism– photo from the CBC
Later evidence proved Rae was right about the Franklin crew’s cannibalismand also proved that Franklin and his crew had died because they were too arrogant to ask for help or communicate with the Inuit people who might have helped save their lives once their ships were stranded.
Jane would however brook no criticism of her husband. She was a lively and interesting writer who lionized Sir John in her work, naming him the discoverer of the Northwest Passage even though many explorers had found it before and it wouldn’t be till 1906 that Roald Amundsen would actually sail the entire passage.
Sir John Franklin memorial in Westminster Abbey by artist Matthew Noble- photo by Laurence Cook
Jane paid for a memorial for her husband in Westminster Abbey and a statue of him in Waterloo Place in Londonand it was due to her influence and lobbying that the Queen knighted her husband shortly after she married him.
Lady Franklin Rock in the Fraser River- photo by Barry Sale
While Sir John Franklin has been lauded in song and story in Canada and his name is affixed to all kinds of buildingsand geographical locations, interestingly a small island in British Columbia’s Fraser River is named after Jane Franklin and commemorates her stay in the nearby community of Yale in 1861 when at age 68 she was on one of her many life-long travel adventures.
Jane actually logged many more travel miles in her lifetime than her husband ever didand wrote about them in 200 interesting travel journals and 2000 letters to friends and family.
Greta Scacchi plays Jane Franklin in a television series about the Franklin expeditioncalled The Terror
Researching this post led me to discover all kinds of interesting things about Jane Franklin too numerous to share here. I’d like to read some of the books and novels that have been written about her.
In 2020 the Canada Mint released a special silver coin designed by Matt Bowen to honour Sir John Franklin.
Jane Franklin was definitely a formidable female force. Her husband can thank her for the fact that many people nearly a 180 years after he died still recognize his name.
Perhaps the school I attended in grade two in Winnipeg should have been named after Jane Franklin instead of her husband.
In an exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery called Headlines: The Art of the News there is a photographic portrait of Ella Cora Hind. Later she dropped the Ella from her name and came to be known simply as Cora Hind.
When I toured the Headlines exhibit with curator Riva Symko she told us Cora had been an agricultural reporter known for her uncanny way of correctly predicting wheat prices.
Cora often dressed in men’s pants, something quite shocking for a woman at the time, and tramped through Manitoba grain fields to collect information to write her agricultural stories for the paper.
Cora was born in 1861 in Ontario. Both her parents had died by the time she was five and so she and her two brothers went to live with their grandfather who taught Cora all about farming.
Cora wanted to become a teacher but she failed the algebra part of her qualification exam. So together with her Aunt Alice, she decided to move to Winnipeg in 1882where they’d heard there might be employment opportunities.
This photo of William Luxton who refused to hire Cora is in the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery
Cora had always dreamed of becoming a journalist so when she arrived in Winnipeg she went to see William Luxton the editor of the Manitoba Free Press. He was a friend of one of Cora’s uncles and so welcomed her warmly to his office.
But he was shocked when she said she wanted to write for the paper. Luxton told Cora women didn’t write for newspapers. Being a reporter was rough work often involving interviewing less than-savoury people. It wasn’t for a woman.
This old typewriter is part of the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. When the Free Press editor wouldn’t hire her Cora learned to type and got another job.
Cora wasn’t deterred. She heard about a new office machine called a typewriter. She rented one, learned to type and got herself a job working for the lawyer Hugh John McDonald.
But she was still interested in farming and grain growing and in 1898 started making crop predictions. Farmers came to trust her expertise and knowledge and she would submit articles about farming to the newspaper under the name E. Hind.
This portrait of John Dafoe who hired Cora as a reporter is also in the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery
In 1901 the brand new editor of the Winnipeg Free Press John Dafoe, being a little more forward-thinking than Mr Luxton, hired her as an agricultural reporter.
Cora would go on to earn an international reputation as an agricultural journalist and her predictions about harvest yields soon were the accepted source for establishing the price of Canadian wheat. She became known as kind of an ‘oracle of wheat’ for her accurate crop predictions.
She was also famous for the way she strode through grain fields in riding breeches, high leather boots and a Stetson hat. She went across Canada inspecting farms. In 1924 she travelled more than 10,000 kilometres checking out crops.
Cora played an important role in getting the vote for women in Manitoba
Cora founded the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club and helped form the Political Equality League with other Winnipeg suffragettes campaigning for women to get the right to vote in Manitoba which they did in 1916.
This vest was made by a Cree woman from Norway House for Cora. The vest is in the collection of the Manitoba Museum and Cora is wearing it in the portrait on display in the Headlines exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. photo by Lyle Dick
Cora Hind was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Manitoba in 1935.
This sculpture of Cora Hind by Miguel Joyal is included in the Winnipeg Citizens Walk of Fame in Assiniboine Park
When Cora died in 1942 they halted trading at the Winnipeg Grain Exchange for two minutes in her memory.
“These women need to get married,” said Fox television commentator Jesse Waters as findings from the exit polls in the recent American election were being discussed. Waters was referring to the fact that single women in the United States voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Another finding from the exit polls was that young people voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates.
Waters proposal for getting those single young women to vote Republican was to get them married to men. Marriage to a man would bring these radical women to their senses.
Political commentator Mollie Hemingway went even further. She blamed the lack of support for the Republicans among single young women on the Democrats. She claimed the Democrats support of abortion rights and LGBTQ rights had encouraged women not to marry men and have children with them.
Chart from the Washington Examiner
Writing about the voting patterns of American young women in the Washington Examiner another conservative political commentator said women’s independence and equality is to blame for the decline in the marriage rate and this is a bad thing for the country and its future. Is he suggesting we need to curtail women’s equality and independence?
Can you believe that in the year 2022 there are still people who think this way? It boggles the mind and is frankly pretty scary.
To me it makes perfect sense why the vote was skewed along gender and age lines. If you are a single female parent struggling to get by you won’t vote for a party that wants to cut social services, take away your affordable medical plan and force you to have another child you can’t support financially.
If you are a young single woman who has just graduated from university or college of course you will vote for the party that wants to help you with your student loans, so you can start your career without crippling debt.
Although I couldn’t find particular statistics for single young womenin Canada we have a definite gender divide when it comes to voting. The Liberal Party gets twice as many votes from women as the Conservatives do. Now why would that be?
What Next? 