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Social Science Women's Studies

Demanding Equality

One Hundred Years of Canadian Feminism

by (author) Joan Sangster

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2021
Category
Women's Studies, Women, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Post-Confederation (1867-)
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774866095
    Publish Date
    Jun 2021
    List Price
    $125.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774866064
    Publish Date
    Jun 2021
    List Price
    $45.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774866071
    Publish Date
    Feb 2022
    List Price
    $37.95

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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.

Joan Sangster's profile page

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

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