Feminism And Oppression Of Women In Canada

The late 1960s in Canada, as throughout the Western world, saw the emergence of a new women 's movement. This new feminism rejected all limits to the equality of women 's rights and showed that equality in daily life cannot be obtained through simple legal, political or institutional modifications. Women were greatly influenced by books and articles by feminists such as Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and Shulamith Firestone, and by publications such as Women Unite: An Anthology of the Women 's Movement (1972) and Margaret Anderson 's Mother Was Not a Person (1973). These writers held that society 's major power relationship was one of domination and oppression of women by men. The existing body of social relationships, along with the very functioning of society, was analysed and

In the late 1960s, discovering that "sisterhood is powerful," women from Vancouver to Halifax began forming groups. The Vancouver Women 's Caucus was organized in 1968 and published The Pedestal from 1969 to 1973. The Montréal Women 's Liberation Movement was founded in 1969, the Front de libération des femmes du Québec published a feminist manifesto in 1970, and the Centre des femmes edited the first French-language radical feminist periodical, Québécoises deboutte! (1971-75). At first, some were consciousness-raising groups, but others quickly turned to concrete action, providing abortion services, health centres, feminist magazines, militant theatre, day-care, shelters for battered women and rape crisis centres, and organizing for equal pay. By the end of the 1960s, Canadian society had begun to adjust to the rebirth of a major social movement, the women 's