Women´s Movement in Canada

1324 Words3 Pages

Many Canadian women in the twentieth century took their given human rights for granted, and little did they know that just merely 50 years ago, women had to fight for their rights on freedom to abort a child and equal wages on identical vocations. Before the Women’s Movement began, women have been considered to have the submissive, secondary role. Women’s Rights have seen drastic changes as women realized their potential to do everything men can do. Canadians have fought determinedly for their changed views on women’s rights during the Feminist Movement on subjects such as legalizing abortion, decriminalizing birth control education and usage, and also through establishing the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
Abortion has been considered a controversial subject all throughout Canadian History because of the exceptional change in views towards the subject throughout the years; from believing every child should be wanted and nurtured, to believing every woman should have the right to plan when and how many children to have. According to the Canadian Criminal Code of 1892, proclaiming a miscarriage was life imprisonment and women were liable for 7 years in prison that obtained a miscarriage through drugs or abortion. However, by the 1960s, between 35 thousand to 120 thousand Canadians were getting illegal and often dangerous abortions each year. As views on abortion changed, Canadians like Dr. Henry Morgentaler and the feminist group The Vancouver Women took action and demonstrated their beliefs of what every woman deserves, other Canadians took action by raising awareness for the prominent issue through the usage of media. After PM Pierre Trudeau passed the Omnibus Bill on May 9 1969, which allowed abortion only if keepin...

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... (National Action Committee on the Status of Women) to lobby the government into enacting the recommendations. Following its creation, the women’s movement “expanded enormously both in the number of women’s organizations it included and in the range of issues”, such as violence against women. By 1980s, most of the 176 recommendations were partially or fully put to action and 46 women’s centers, 36 service oriented organizations, 15 transition centers, 12 rape centers were created. In conclusion, the women of Canada significantly changed the rights of Canadians through demonstrating for, participating in, and lobbying the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. By making the personal political, present day Canadian women were able to take their high quality life because of the actions took by countless of women during Second Wave Feminism.

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