Social Science Women's Studies
Demanding Equality
One Hundred Years of Canadian Feminism
- Publisher
- UBC Press
- Initial publish date
- Jun 2021
- Category
- Women's Studies, Women, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Post-Confederation (1867-)
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eBook
- ISBN
- 9780774866095
- Publish Date
- Jun 2021
- List Price
- $125.00
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Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780774866064
- Publish Date
- Jun 2021
- List Price
- $45.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780774866071
- Publish Date
- Feb 2022
- List Price
- $37.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
For one hundred years women fashioned different dreams of social transformation in their search for equality, autonomy, and dignity; yet what is Canadian feminism?
Demanding Equality offers illustrations of feminist thought and organizing from mid-nineteenth-century, Enlightenment-inspired writing to the multi-issue movement of the 1980s. Broadening our definition of feminism – and recognizing that its political, cultural, and social dimensions are entangled – Joan Sangster explores the different pathways pursued to gain equality. She challenges the popular “wave” theory, concluding that feminist activism was continuous, despite changing significantly across decades.
Demanding Equality presents a picture of a heterogeneous movement characterized by both alliances and fierce internal debates. This comprehensive rear-view look at feminism in all its political guises encourages a wider public conversation about what Canadian feminism has been, is, and should be.
About the author
Joan Sangster is a professor of women's studies and history at Trent University, where she also teaches at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies. Her most recent books are Girl Trouble: Female 'Delinquency' in English Canada and Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada.
Awards
- Winner, The Canadian Committee on Womens and Gender History English Language Book Prize
Editorial Reviews
Sangster’s precisely written yet wideranging book is a tour de force that chronicles the struggles for ‘equality, autonomy, and dignity’ in all of their rich complexity.
Literary Review of Canada
"Demanding Equality is a formidable book, wide in scope, commendably readable, expansive in content, and convincing in analysis."
University of Toronto Quarterly
[Demanding Equality] is an impressively balanced account that will undoubtedly become required reading for gender and women's history classes across the country.
JACANZ, Vol. 1, Issue 2
"There are few, if any, historians better placed than Joan Sangster to write a history of a century of feminism in Canada... Demanding Equality is a book that is at once capacious in its scope and accessibly written."
Labour / Le Travail