'This is our Work': The Women's Division of the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, 1919-1938

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
'This is our Work': The Women's Division of the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, 1919-1938
Abstract
Anglophone women, working in a new capacity as federal civil servants, exercised a significant influence on Canadian immigration policy in the interwar years. The author focuses on the women's division of the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, an agency charged with recruiting British women for domestic service from 1919 to 1938. The author points out that the division was a product of the women's wing of the social reform movement and prevailing theories of gender difference and Anglo-superiority. She traces its nearly twenty years of operations showing how the division, initially regarded as a source of imperial strength and a means of English Canada's cultural survival, came to symbolize the disadvantages of Canada's connection to Great Britain and supposed weaknesses inherent in the female character. The author outlines a history of middle- and upper-class women's involvement in voluntary immigration organizations prior to the inter-war period, including such groups as the Montreal Women's Protective Immigration Society, founded in 1882, to help female immigrants find work in the city.
Type
PhD dissertation
University
McGill University
Place
Montreal
Date
1999
# of Pages
iv-242p.
Language
en
URL
Citation
Mancuso, Rebecca. “‘This Is Our Work’: The Women’s Division of the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, 1919-1938.” PhD dissertation, McGill University, 1999. https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/w0892c512.
Find in a library
Permalink