Research Guides: TRU Library Book Displays: Women's History Month

On Display at TRU Library's Learning Commons

In Canada, October is known as:

Women's History Month

Much like International Women's Day, which happens every year on March 8th, Women's History Month is a time to celebrate and recognize the efforts and achievements of women and girls and how they have, and continue to shape the history of Canada and the world. Throughout history, women have stood up for rights and freedoms, advocated for equality in the workforce and in politics, and have dared to change the standards for industry, healthcare and society. Faced with abuse and discriminations of age, sex, race, status and disability, women continue to overcome with strength and determination, inspiring future generations to follow in their footsteps for a better Canada.

We've hand-picked this selection of e-books to show some of the inspiring efforts of women throughout Canadian history, and the world.

Women's History Month

The Business of Women : Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901-51 by Melanie Buddle
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780774818131
Publication Date: 2010-04-29
In the past, Western women were divorced from the world of business. Historians have consequently tended to overlook the experiences of women entrepreneurs. Who were these women, and how were they able to justify their work outside the home? The Business of Women explores the world of women entrepreneurs in early twentieth-century British Columbia.
Canadian Women and the Struggle for Equality by Lorna R. Marsden
Call Number: HQ 1453 .M37 2012
ISBN: 9780195430493
Publication Date: 2012-07-05
The degree of change in women's lives in Canada over the last 150 years is staggering, and much is the result of the fight for greater equality. Lorna R. Marsden, sociologist and activist - who has herself been involved in the action - chronicles the circumstances, the people, and the social changes that have characterized women's journey down the long road toward equality. Her account considers changes brought about by such forces as war, immigration, and public health, as well as other complex historical changes, such as legal evolution and employment opportunities.
Cartographies of Violence : Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment by Mona Oikawa
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780802096012
Publication Date: 2012-09-10
In 1942, the federal government expelled more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes in British Columbia. From 1942 to 1949, they were dispossessed, sent to incarceration sites, and dispersed across Canada. Over 4,000 were deported to Japan. Cartographies of Violence analyses the effects of these processes for some Japanese Canadian women.
Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize by Judith Hicks Stiehm
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781538118993
Publication Date: 2018-11-02
Only seventeen women have won the Nobel Prize for Peace since it was first awarded in 1901. Hailing from all over the world, some of these women have held graduate degrees, while others barely had access to education. Some began their work young, some late in life. In this compelling book, Judith Stiehm narrates these women's varied lives in fascinating detail.
Compelled to Act: Histories of Women's Activism in Western Canada by Sarah Carter (Editor); Nanci Langford (Editor)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780887558719
Publication Date: 2020-10-02
Compelled to Act showcases fresh historical perspectives on the diversity of women's contributions to social and political change in prairie Canada in the twentieth century, including but looking beyond the era of suffrage activism. In our current time of revitalized activism against racism, colonialism, violence, and misogyny, this volume reminds us of the myriad ways women have challenged and confronted injustices and inequalities.
Disinherited Generations: our struggle to reclaim treaty rights for First Nations women and their descendants by Nellie Carlson; Kathleen Steinhauer
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780888646903
Publication Date: 2013-07-03
This oral autobiography of two remarkable Cree women tells their life stories against a backdrop of government discrimination, First Nations activism, and the resurgence of First Nations communities.
The Famous Five: Canada’s Crusaders for Women’s Rights by Barbara Smith
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781772032345
Publication Date: 2019-05-14
On August 27, 1927, five women gathered at a house on Edmonton's Southside to sign a letter that would change the course of Canadian history. The meeting of the women had been prompted by Emily Murphy, an Alberta magistrate, whose right to render judgements had been challenged by a lawyer who maintained that only men could be appointed as judges because only men were considered "persons" under the British North America Act. The Famous Five is a comprehensive look at the remarkable lives, prolific careers, sometimes disturbing contradictions, and extraordinary achievements of these five women who fought for equality at a time when women were barely recognized as relevant.
Forever loved : exposing the hidden crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Jennifer Brant
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781772580655
Publication Date: 2016
Jennifer Brant and D. Memee Lavell-Harvard have pulled together a variety of voices to speak on what has been identified by both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations as a grave violation of the basic human rights of Aboriginal women and girls. Linking colonial practices with genocide, through their exploration of the current statistics, root causes and structural components of the issue, including conversations on policing, media and education, the contributing authors illustrate the resilience, strength, courage, and spirit of Indigenous women and girls as they struggle to survive in a society shaped by racism and sexism, patriarchy and misogyny
A Great Revolutionary Wave: Women and the Vote in British Columbia by Lara Campbell
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780774863223
Publication Date: 2020-07-24
A Great Revolutionary Wave traces the history of the fight for the vote from the 1870s to the 1940s against a backdrop of social reform, international social movements, labour politics, and settler colonialism.
Harriet's Legacies: Race, Historical Memory, and Futures in Canada by Ronald Cummings (Editor); Natalee Caple (Editor)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780228010654
Publication Date: 2022-05-15
Historic freedom fighter and conductor of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman risked her life to ferry enslaved people from America to freedom in Canada. Her legacy instigates and orients this exploration of the history of Black lives and the future of collective struggle in Canada. Harriet's Legacies recuperates the significance of Tubman's time in Canada as more than just an interlude in her American narrative: it is a new point from which to think about Black diasporic mobilities, possibilities, and histories.
Indigenous Women, Work, and : 1940-1980 by Mary Jane Logan McCallum
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780887557385
Publication Date: 2014-05-16
When dealing with Indigenous women's history we are conditioned to think about women as private-sphere figures, circumscribed by the home, the reserve, and the community. In many ways Indigenous people have been cast in static and one-dimensional identities, and their twentieth century experiences reduced to a singular story of decline and loss. In this book, historian Mary Jane Logan McCallum rejects both of these long-standing conventions by presenting case studies of Indigenous domestic servants, hairdressers, community health representatives, and nurses working in "modern Native ways".
I Wish to Keep a Record: Nineteenth-Century New Brunswick Women Diarists and Their World by Gail Campbell
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781487520182
Publication Date: 2017-03-24
Nineteenth-century New Brunswick society was dominated by white, Protestant, Anglophone men. Yet, during this time of state formation in Canada, women increasingly helped to define and shape a provincial outlook. I wish to keep a record is the first book to focus exclusively on the life-course experiences of nineteenth-century New Brunswick women.
Mennonite Women in Canada: a history by Marlene Epp
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780887553431
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
"Mennonite Women in Canada "traces the complex social history and multiple identities of Canadian Mennonite women over 200 years. Marlene Epp explores women's roles, as prescribed and as lived, within the contexts of immigration and settlement, household and family, church and organizational life, work and education, and in response to social trends and events. The combined histories of Mennonite women offer a rich and fascinating study of how women actively participate in ordering their lives within ethno-religious communities.
Sisters or Strangers? : Immigrant, Ethnic, and Racialized Women in Canadian History by Marlene Epp (Editor); Franca Iacovetta (Editor)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781442629134
Publication Date: 2016-09-05
Sisters or Strangers? explores the complex lives of immigrant, ethnic, and racialized women in Canada. Among the themes examined in this new edition are the intersection of race, crime, and justice, the creation of white settler societies, letters and oral histories, domestic labour, the body, political activism, food studies, gender and ethnic identity, and trauma, violence, and memory.
To be equals in our own country : women and the vote in Quebec by Denyse Baillargeon ; translated by Käthe Roth
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780774838504
Publication Date: 2019
To Be Equals in Our Own Country chronicles the bitter struggle for women's suffrage in Quebec, the last province to grant Canadian women this fundamental human right.
University Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada by Sara Z. MacDonald
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780228008637
Publication Date: 2021-11-15
Examining the period between 1870 and 1930, this book provides a comparative study of women at universities across Canada. MacDonald concludes that women's higher education cannot be seen as a progressive narrative, a triumphant story of trailblazers and firsts, of doors being thrown open and staying open. The early promise of equal education was not fulfilled in the longer term, as a backlash against the growing presence of women on campuses resulted in separate academic programs, closer moral regulation, and barriers that restricted their admission into the burgeoning fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.