Category Archives: Women’s History

When Protest Becomes News: The 1970 Abortion Caravan and the Politics of Media Coverage

By Hailey Baldock With a black coffin strapped to the top of their van and a fiery determination to scrap Canada’s abortion laws, the women of the 1970 Abortion Caravan knew they had to make a scene. And they did. Over the course of two weeks, the Caravan moved across the country from Vancouver to Ottawa, rallying supporters and drawing… Read more »

Triceps, Traps, and… Tiaras?: Gender Performance and Subversion in Women’s Bodybuilding through Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)

Two black-and-white photos of a woman, viewed from behind. Her hair is curled and in an elaborate updo and she is wearing frilled briefs and wrapped in sheer cloth. She is flexing her muscles to show the musculature of her back and arms.

In 1985, filmmakers George Butler and Charles Gaines produced Pumping Iron II: The Women. It followed women bodybuilders at a bodybuilding show in Las Vegas during 1983, but mainly focused on two vastly different competitors to explore the expressions and understandings of femininity in the masculine-coded sport. Rachel McLish, the reigning Ms. Olympia champion, performed a socially accepted version of bodily femininity in the film; she was very lightly muscled with some body fat that contoured her body. On the other end of the film’s gender continuum was Bev Francis, a powerlifter-turned-bodybuilder who carried more muscle mass than female bodybuilding had ever seen.

Gender subversion was embodied in Bev Francis. Francis was far more muscular than the other competitors, and the film used her subversive body to drive the plot forward. Conversations between competitors, judges, and onlookers were often in reference to Francis’ body; it is unlikely that femininity would have been as intensely debated had Francis not been a competitor. She challenged women’s bodybuilding so much so that the judges and officials called an emergency meeting to discuss the competition’s ruleset after seeing Francis’ body.

Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Must Change

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Black and white photo of a person speaking into a megaphone.

Sex workers’ lives are directly at risk because of C-36.

Spotting the Difference: Comparing Canadian Sex Work Legislation from 1985 and 2014

Black and white photo of two women looking at a book with bookshelves behind them.

The countless number of sex workers, organizations, and newspaper articles all argued the same underlying premise as they had with Bill C-49: that the government’s legislation endangers sex workers.

Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Hasn’t Changed

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It is unsurprising that the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform launched a constitutional challenge to the PCEPA in 2021- brought to the Ontario Superior Court between October 2 and 7, 2022.On September 18, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court released its decision in CASWLR v. Attorney General (Canada), deciding to uphold the PCEPA.

Opting for “Sexual Wellbeing for All”: Community & Sex Education in Alberta, 1970s and 2024

Cartoon of a pregnant person nervously listening to a caricature of Premier Danielle Smith, who is saying "Oh, yeah, for sure. Doing that will get you super-pregnant. Your folks probably should have told you that bit if they weren't going to opt in to health class. But the good news is that now you get to say you have "parents' rights"!" The caption reads "Alberta has seen a remarkable reduction in teen pregnancies. The UCP is threatening us with changes to sex ed that risk reversing that 40 year trend.

Karissa Patton and Nancy Janovicek Eric Dyck’s comic lampoons a longstanding dispute on sex education in Canada: comprehensive sex education as crucial to young people’s health, bodily autonomy, and human rights vs. parents’ rights to make decisions about what knowledge and services their children’s access. Since the 1960s, students and youth have been vocal in the debates about curriculum on… Read more »

Feminism and its Malcontents in Canadian Universities

Black-and-white photograph of several women in a library, looking for books on the shelves and working at tables.

Sara Wilmshurst First off, I’d like to bless the Internet Archive for preserving human folly. The paper under review today has been scrubbed from its original home but lives on in infamy through the Wayback Machine. I am speaking of “On the Challenges of Dating and Marriage in the New Generations,” published under the name of Benyamin Gohjogh. It made… Read more »

Uncovering the Rutherford Maid: Gender, Class, and Representation in Living History

Julia Stanski I discovered Lillian Rose Adkins on September 27, 2023. Although I hadn’t known her name, I’d been searching for this woman for at least five years. Others had been looking for much longer. She’s been dead for more than half a century, but Lillian might be the key to a representational puzzle that has obscured her—and women like… Read more »

Thinking Historically about Sexuality, Gender, and the Implications of “Safety”

The title page of Woman and Her Secret Passions (MC 4516 James Waddell family fonds); photo taken at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB).

Gemma Marr “The luxurious habits of civilized life lead to many excesses. Those of gluttony and hard drinking have been sufficiently commented upon. Tracts and newspapers showing the fatal results of intoxication, surround us on all hands. But an evil more destructive than any of these has received, comparatively, but little attention. It is time that the warning was given,… Read more »

“Absurd Quackery”: The Canadian Women’s Health Movement, Vaccine Attitudes, and Healthsharing

A magazine page titled "Shots in the Dark: The Risk of Infant Vaccination." The page includes a picture of a child in a crib.

Kathryn Hughes In 1989, the popular Canadian women’s health magazine Healthsharing published an article entitled “Shots in the Dark: The Risk of Infant Vaccination”. Echoing the anti-vaccine movement of this period (the title borrows from the 1985 influential anti-vaccine text DTP: A Shot in the Dark), the article discussed the risk of the DPT-P vaccine, quoted personal stories from mothers… Read more »