Thoroughly revised and updated, this third edition of Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History presents readings on the key developments in Canadian, and more generally, women's history. A detailed introduction to the volume notes that society must know about the past in order tounderstand the present and to confront the future. Once we learn, for example, that the nation's constitutional arrangements have, since their beginnings, disadvantaged women as citizens, that knowledge can become the basis for demands of redress. Once we discover that women routinely have beenpaid less than men for comparable labour, the case for negotiating a new deal has begun. In this third edition there are 27 readings, 8 of which have been retained from the previous second edition. There are 19 new selections which focus on a range of issues including race and ethnicity, work, sexual orientation, and (dis)ability. The readings are also organized into 4 sections:Pre-Confederation, Post-Confederation, Post-WW1, and Post-WW2. Each selection is introduced by the editors, who place the reading within its historical and historiographical contexts.

Veronica Strong-Boag is a professor of women’s and gender studies and of educational studies at the University of British Columbia. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and a past president of the Canadian Historical Association. She has written widely on the history of Canadian women and children—including studies of the 1920s and 30s, the experience of post—WW II suburbia, Nellie L. McClung, E. Pauline Johnson, childhood disabilities, and modern neo-conservatism’s attack on women and children—and has won the John A. Macdonald Prize in Canadian History, the 2012 Canada Prize in the Social Sciences awarded by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and, with Carole Gerson, the Raymond Klibansky Prize in the Humanities. In 2012 Strong-Boag was awarded the Tyrrell Medal from the Royal Society of Canada for outstanding work in Canadian history. She is the author of Fostering Nation: Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage (WLU Press, 2010).

Veronica Strong-Boag's profile page

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"Appropriate to an introductory course in Canadian women's history, the articles cover a wide range of themes such as politics, work, sexuality, public policy and family. Each article is introduced by a short essay which not only provides necessary background and historiographical context butalso links themes and ideas with other articles in the collection. The result is a coherent and accessible teaching tool." Atlantis