As one of the most difficult periods of the twentieth century, the Great Depression left few Canadians untouched. Using more than eighty interviews with women who lived and worked in Toronto in the 1930s, Breadwinning Daughters examines the consequences of these years for women in their homes and workplaces, and in the city's court rooms and dance halls.

In this insightful account, Katrina Srigley argues that young women were central to the labour market and family economies of Depression-era Toronto. Oral histories give voice to women from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds, and challenge readers to consider how factors such as race, gender, class, and marital status shaped women's lives and influenced their job options, family arrangements, and leisure activities. Breadwinning Daughters brings to light previously forgotten and unstudied experiences and illustrates how women found various ways to negotiate the burdens and joys of the 1930s.

Katrina Srigley is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Nipissing University.

Katrina Srigley's profile page

• Winner, Alison Prentice Award in Women's History awarded by Ontario Historical Society

‘An engaging, readable, and important work… Breadwinning Daughters is an invaluable compendium of women’

s lives in the 1930s.’

Canadian Woman Studies; vol 30:01:2013

‘This book is an important and needed addition to Depression era historiography, labour studies, and oral history, and goes a long way in balancing the previous literature on male employment and unemployment.’

Left History: vol15:01:2011