The Challenges Of Work And Womanhood During The Great Depression

The stereotypical Canadian family during the Great Depression consisted of a father who left home to find work elsewhere in the country, a mother trying to make ends meet with what little they had left, and their malnourished children. Although, as is often the case with stereotypes, this was not how all of the population lived. Specifically speaking, women were not just resigned to waiting for their husbands or fathers to come home with money and provisions. Many Canadian women in the 1930s may have been the only reason their families survived that decade of hardship and sacrifice. Women who fit this role in ways that are not often discussed, such as young women in the workforce, farm women, and women activists, shall be examined in the following

On the prairies, Canadian farm women faced very specific challenges. In the article ““I like to Hoe My Own Row”: A Saskatchewan Farm Woman’s Notions about Work and Womanhood during the Great Depression,” Author Cristine Georgina Bye’s great-grandmother, Kate Graves’ specific challenges mainly consisted of keeping her family afloat despite her growing age while also balancing traditional feminine roles with the hard labour of farm work. Kate Graves’ “spent seventeen-hour days churning butter, raising chickens, tending children, cooking, cleaning, canning, sewing, and gardening” during a time when farming was nearly impossible due to droughts and the harsh economic conditions of the Depression. Graves’ family, like other’s in rural Saskatchewan, suffered losses during the thirties, as many families would put off medical procedures because of lack of funds. Graves’ lost her daughter to tuberculosis in 1933 and in total her region lost “22 percent of its farm population.” There is very little written about Canadian farm women during the Great Depression, but what there is written about these women showcases a particular strength and determination that can only be found in the rural lands of the