Métis Victoria Belcourt Callihu was born in northern Alberta in 1861. At the age of 13, she joined a bison hunt for the first time. Her mother was a healer, skilled in setting broken bones and using medicinal herbs. While men hunted game, women helped bring it home and then cut the meat.
Victoria’s story highlights the various roles women performed in early Alberta’s history. Before the arrival of Europeans, women played crucial roles both in managing households and ensuring the family’s survival. The arrival of European women initiated a gender division of labor, where women predominantly occupied unpaid domestic roles. Read more on calgary1.one about women’s participation in paid work, their involvement in the labor movement, and their fight for rights. More on calgary1.one.
Early Professions
The first nurses in Alberta were nuns. In 1870, they built a hospital-school-orphanage in St. Albert. In 1890, the first fully equipped hospital in Alberta opened in Medicine Hat, and just four years later, the Alberta School of Nursing was established there.
At that time, the hospital had only one doctor and two nurses—Grace Reynolds and Mary Ellen Beartles. The hospital had 24 beds, and the nurses had only one day off per week—Sunday. In 1919, the Alberta District Nurse Service (ADNS) was created due to the growing need for urgent medical assistance in remote areas of the province.
In addition to nursing, women earned a living by doing domestic work. In 1911, 46% of all employed women in the province worked as domestic servants. These were mostly young, unmarried women. Wages were extremely low, and workdays were long.
Due to the lack of private life and prestige, they often switched from domestic work to factory work when possible. The Great Western Garment Company (GWG) employed women, particularly immigrants, at its factory, making men’s work clothes for nearly a century.
With the invention of the typewriter, office work became available to women. In 1902, there were eight stenographers in Calgary; by 1914, there were 750. Office environments were cleaner and safer than factories, but the office jobs available to women were mostly low-skilled, monotonous, and poorly paid.
Dark Chapter in Professional History
Women’s low purchasing power, especially in the growing urban centers of the province, led many to prostitution. It became especially widespread after the construction of the CPR railway. Railroad workers came without families, creating a constant demand for women of easy virtue.
In the late 1880s and early 1900s, the authorities did not attempt to suppress prostitution, as it served their interests by keeping men in the area longer. This changed when the population of the province began to grow rapidly. Many of the early settlers were of Anglo-Saxon descent, holding strict traditional views on the role of women as mothers and wives. They demanded that the police fight “moral crimes.” Interestingly, most of the women arrested for prostitution in Calgary in 1914 were married.
Reform Movement Against Women’s Paid Labor
Between the world wars, women’s employment remained unstable. For example, a week’s work in the Ramsey’s department store cafeteria earned $7.50, which didn’t cover rent or food.
Before World War II, organizations like the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire and the National Council of Women of Canada were formed, primarily by married women of the middle or upper class. These organizations opposed women working well-paid jobs, arguing it negatively affected their health and femininity, and reduced their desire to become wives and mothers. This stance was partly motivated by their own interests, as they feared being left without domestic help.
However, it wasn’t just bourgeois reformers who opposed women’s labor. In 1898, the Trades and Labor Congress (TLC) called for women to be removed from the list of candidates for men’s jobs, believing that employers were exploiting the large number of available workers and lowering wages for both women and men.
Particularly hostile were attitudes toward married women in the workforce. Their employment was even limited by the federal government until 1955. Married women were forced to work either because their husbands earned too little or because their husbands had abandoned or died. The mother’s allowance introduced in 1919 didn’t cover even the basic needs. Pressure on women increased during high unemployment periods, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Gradual Changes
The shortage of workers during World War II, when many Canadian men joined the army, quelled the opposition to women’s paid labor. During this time, women worked in munitions factories, assembled and repaired military planes, and sewed military uniforms. A shortage of teachers even led to the repeal of Alberta’s ban on hiring married women to work in schools.
However, such expansion of opportunities didn’t drastically change the situation. By 1951, only one-quarter of Canadian women of working age had jobs. The sharp rise in women’s employment began in the 1960s with the gradual change in gender stereotypes and the economic need for labor. By the mid-1970s, Alberta had the highest female employment rate in Canada.
Labor Unions for Women
The most effective way to address these issues was through unionization. Women in Alberta were also actively involved in the labor movement through Women’s Labor Leagues (WLL)—socialist organizations that had emerged in Canada before World War I.
In 2003, Canadian women aged 15 and older who were members of unions earned an average of $19.94 per hour, while women who were not union members earned only $14.55 per hour.
By 2010, women in unions earned 93.7% of the wages men earned, while non-union women earned only 79.4%. Additionally, union members received other benefits, such as pensions, medical plans, and paid leave.
Maternity Leave
In 1975, Alberta became one of the last provinces to pass legislation guaranteeing job security during maternity leave. However, these guarantees didn’t apply to all women; employers were allowed to grant maternity leave without pay, and the duration of maternity leave was just 12 weeks, with another 6 weeks after childbirth.
It wasn’t until 1980 that the Alberta government passed legislation on maternity leave, which applied to all employers, but women had to work for at least a year to be eligible.
In 1990, amendments to the legislation provided 10 weeks of child care leave, available to both parents. In 2000, 35 weeks were designated for child care, and one year for maternity and childbirth.
In 2001, after the Unemployment Insurance Act was passed, Alberta decided to extend the provisions for maternity and introduce provisions for paternity leave. Interestingly, union members had additional income support. The first union to secure paid maternity leave for its members was the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), following a strike in 1981.