The Wheat Boom In Canada

Years 1901 - 1911:

The Wheat Boom in Canada in the late 1890s and early 1900s contributed to the rise of an agrarian economy, where the family formed the basic production unit. Women played an important role in the family by tending to domestic chores and child rearing. At about the same time, the rise of industrial capitalism drew men into the industrial wage-labour market. The women’s contribution to the domestic front enabled men to participate in wage earning opportunities, due to which the MLFPR was notably above 90 percent. The rise of large-scale factory production raised the insatiable demand for cheap labour. Employers began to recruit women as cheap unskilled or semi-skilled labourers in some light industries, such as textiles,

which began to define women’s economic role. In the early twentieth century, however, only about 17 percent of the women were part of the paid labour force employed mainly in the domestic and clerical sector, and as teachers and seamstresses. The period from 1901 to 1911 saw a change in attitude about women’s economic role and the employment of young, single women before marriage began to be tolerated, with strong sanctions against the employment of married women. Most women engaged in paid labour as an interval between leaving school and marrying. Women also began to flood the civil service in 1908 when merit, determined by entrance examinations, replaced patronage as the basis for appointments.
However, the family wage ideology perpetuated the subordinate role of women within the traditional household. The idea that the male breadwinner should earn enough to support his family and a wife’s place is in the family home was dominant. Any wages earned by a wife were considered to be of secondary importance which exerted an extra burden on women who typically had to perform a double shift, i.e., assuming the double burden of poorly paid employment and undervalued domestic labour and childcare at home. Thus, the prevalent social and cultural norms that reinforced the gender specific roles of men and women restricted the access of women to the labour market.

Years 1911 – 1921:

The labour force participation of women increased slightly from about 17 percent in 1911 to about 19 percent by 1920. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 brought very little immediate change to the Canadian labour market as the economy was still recovering from depression that began in 1912. However, as the war dragged on and mobilization increased due to many factories being switched over to produce munitions for the Imperial Munitions Board, women began to be employed on a mass scale in these factories.
As the war began to draw to a close, it became apparent that this increase in women workers was only a temporary influx as they were replaced by returning soldiers, which helped retain the MLFPR roughly around the same level as in the previous decade. The only industry that employed women in significant numbers and retained them even on the return of the soldiers was the rubber goods industry. Though, there was not an impressive change in female participation in the primary and secondary sectors, tertiary employment, particularly, the clerical sector was the one which did see a sea change in the employment of women. Women represented about 15 percent of clerical workers in 1914 and the number rose significantly to about 30 percent in 1918 and the percentage of women workers in clerical occupations almost doubled over the decade of 1911 to 1921. The substitution of women clerks for men occurred in a number of industries like wholesale houses, railway shops, banks and retail outlets. However, the employment of young, single women became more acceptable as long as they occupied low-paying female jobs. This limited acceptance was premised on the idea that such work would not be a grave threat, as these women would return to domestic spheres upon marriage. Thus, the First World War did not bring about a significant increase in the FLFPR but did, to some extent, change the structure of the labour market.