Calgary & Southern Alberta

Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada

In the 1960s and 1970s historians focussed on the suffrage movement and argued that women solely sought the vote in the belief that political equality would generate societal reform. Some historians, however, place the suffrage movement within the larger stream of the Protestant middle-class reform movement. Veronica Strong-Boag, however, argues that power, fame, and influence motivated women reformers – in particular, those women associated with the National Council of Women. Historians have likewise explained the early granting of women’s suffrage in the West from differing perspectives. In The Woman Suffrage Movement in Canada, Catherine L. Cleverdon argues that the western frontier forged an equal partnership between men and women and, consequently, men were quick to recognise women’s contributions to prairie society. Carol Bacchi extends the argument to include male and female shared participation in the larger reform movement. Upon examining the struggle for the "homestead" dower in Alberta, however, Catherine Cavanaugh argues that men were not as open to women’s equality as Cleverdon and Bacchi suggest.