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.

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.

Joan Sangster's profile page

• Winner, The Canadian Committee on Womens and Gender History English Language Book Prize

"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

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

"In Demanding Equality, Joan Sangster demonstrates the confidence and virtuosity of a well-seasoned scholar at the top of her game."

Social History

"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