“Imperialism” refers to a political process by which one nation exerts control over another through military, economic, or cultural force. According to the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance (NDWA), “imperialism allows capitalism to function” because it is a means for capitalist countries to access “new markets, resources, and workers.”[1] Historically, the term “imperialism” has been subject to heated dialogue both within Canadian women’s organizations and throughout the global movement for women’s liberation. This archival exhibit focuses on debates surrounding imperialism, highlighting women who supported anti-imperialist causes and dissented from the mainstream Canadian women’s movement.
Ultimately, the records featured in this exhibit illustrate the feminist movement’s internal divide between those who wanted to focus solely on women’s issues in North America, and those who sought to act in solidarity with women’s struggles against Western military violence on other continents. They also show an internal divide among anti-war groups, between those who condemned all forms of violence and those who believed revolutionary violence was justified.
1. The Personal is Political... but not THAT Political
In June and July of 1975, imperialism became a contentious topic at the United Nations’ First World Conference on Women, the first-ever international conference focused solely on women’s issues. Convened in Mexico City to commemorate International Women’s Year and its theme of “Equality, Development, and Peace,” the conference included over 5,000 delegates from 133 countries, the majority of whom were women. Broadly speaking, the conference’s goals were clear: to eliminate sexist discrimination and secure women’s human rights internationally. But delegates vehemently disagreed on how these goals might be achieved.[2]
On the other side of the city, NGOs held a parallel conference called the International Women’s Tribune, allowing women from non-governmental and activist organizations to meet and discuss resolutions made at the official conference. Both the official and unofficial conferences were riddled with debate regarding imperialist violence perpetrated by so-called “developed” countries, including colonialism, foreign occupation, forced displacement, resource extraction, economic interference, Zionism, and apartheid. While these conferences saw the inauguration of International Women’s Decade (1975-1985), the following ten years demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that women did not share political goals in common simply based on biological sex.[3][4]
This revelation proved shocking for some Canadian delegates, including Maria Eriksen from the Status of Women Action Committee, who reported that “an anti-Western mood, or perhaps more accurately an anti-developed-nations feeling” had taken hold at the NGO Tribunal, noting further that “most Canadian women (and perhaps men) are not accustomed to this kind of confrontation. We are not about to grapple physically with others for a microphone and then hang on to it with both hands while screaming out a message to our audience.”[5] At both conferences, many Canadian delegates criticized women from “developing” countries for focusing on “political issues” and “ideological issues” as opposed to “women’s issues.”[6]
At the official UN conference, these “political issues” centred around a document called The Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and their Contribution to Development and Peace, written and endorsed by a group of 77 “developing” countries. One non-binding commitment included in this declaration determined that “women and men together should eliminate colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, foreign domination and occupation, Zionism, apartheid, racial discrimination, the acquisition of land by force and the recognition of such acquisition, since such practices inflict incalculable suffering on men, women, and children.”[7] However, delegates from Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and West Germany disagreed with the Group of 77’s contention that “Zionism” and “apartheid” must be eliminated to secure women’s liberation globally.[8]
At issue here were two contentious political regimes, both established in 1948: The Zionist policy of Israel, which deployed ethnic cleansing, massacres, and forced displacement against the Palestinian people to establish a Jewish nation-state [12]; and South African Apartheid, a social project initiated by the all-white National Party that physically segregated Black and white citizens. Both regimes barred the indigenous populations from participating in national politics and sought to legitimize the settler population’s right to the land.[9] As Jamaican ambassador, diplomat, gender specialist, and “group of 77” member Dr. Lucille Mair reflected following the conference in Mexico, controversies surrounding Zionism and apartheid were not new to the women’s movement of 1975, nor were arguments about which policies constituted “women’s issues”:
"We identified some things which we, the 77, felt were strong matters of principle, not matters of negotiation. I don’t think this caused a new rift. I think the gulf between the position of women in the Third World and the developed world was there, is still there, and will be there until we come to grips with the situation… the usual debate over the insertion of Zionism was not new, and I’m not aware that this aggravated any tensions among women as women. It did make clear that a large section of the world sees certain political problems in a particular way. They see them as having great potential for international conflict, and we’ve been saying this in many ways at UN meetings and conferences for years. No doubt we’ll continue to say them as long as these areas of attention need to be identified. Apartheid is one, Zionism is one, etc. There was nothing new about that area of political difference... Another source of difference was the sovereign right of countries to nationalize their resources. You might ask what this has to do with women, but as we have indicated, the whole future of a new international economic order vitally affects the future of women."[10]
These areas of attention not only generated international conflict, but also led to dissension within localized feminist organizations. Take, for example, The Leila Khaled Collective, which grew out of The Toronto Women’s Liberation Group in the Fall of 1970. Forming with a goal to push the Women’s Liberation Movement toward a theory and practice of anti-imperialist struggle, this burgeoning women’s collective named themselves after Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who rose to prominence after hijacking two civilian aircraft in August 1969 and September 1970. In 1948, Khaled and her family had been expelled from Palestine alongside 700,000 of their fellow Palestinian Arabs who fled mass violence when the state of Israel was formed.[11] The 1948 “war,” which Palestinians refer to as “The Nakba” or “The Catastrophe,” involved the ethnic cleansing of British-ruled Mandatory Palestine through massacres, biological warfare, and the destruction of 400-600 Palestinian villages.[12]
In their inaugural position paper, The Leila Khaled Collective stated that “we see a women’s movement in North America attacking symbols (bras and beauty contests) and not the oppressor, concerned with individual liberation while black sisters are beaten and tortured, demanding freedom and equality from a decaying society where no one can be free and equal.” Their paper argued that many of Canada’s leftist groups accepted a “defeatist position,” tacitly supporting “bourgeois democracy” and “white privilege” while “the [Black] Panthers and the Vietnamese take the offensive – a united front of oppressed people struggling forward for their liberation.”[13] The only solution to preventing rising fascism, they argued, was an international anti-imperialist movement in support of women’s militant liberation struggles around the world:
"When we say that we must understand the oppression of women before we can understand other people’s oppression, we make a split that most women cannot make. We fail to see that women are among the strongest people in this society, precisely because they fight so hard for their own survival, for the survival of their husbands, their children, and their communities under capitalism. While it is true that women have always been socialized to care for others at the expense of themselves, their capacity to support and fight for others is a strength, not a weakness. In many ways, women’s liberation up until now seems to have been saying it is a weakness. This contradiction can be resolved in a more revolutionary way."[14]
Arguing that “women are capable of struggling for women’s liberation as a part of the revolutionary struggle for the liberation of all people,” The Leila Khaled Collective vehemently rejected mainstream feminist ideologies of sexist oppression.[15]
Others disagreed: for example, after attending the International Women’s Year Congress for Women which took place in Berlin, October 1975, Terry Padgham from the Voice of Women (VOW) delegation complained that “the congress was used as a public platform for political propaganda...speeches were mainly a condemnation of imperialism, fascism, colonialism, and racism (sometimes Zionism), [but] never sexism. In the struggle against these evils, the role of women, if mentioned at all, was to work with men...it was a great disappointment to never get beyond the rhetoric.”[16]
Many Canadian feminists, Padgham included, viewed national liberation and women’s liberation as entirely separate issues. These conflicting views exemplify the intense political debate among Canadian feminists which took place in the late 20th century. Similarly, Julie Bubnick of the Manitoba Action Committee on the Status of Women reported on her experience at the IWY Tribune in Mexico City, stating that “The political overtones were probably the most disruptive forces at the conference, creating more factions among the delegates than had originally existed. Much to my disappointment, most of the delegates or at least the most vocal ones were more concerned with solving the political and economic problems in their own countries than they were with solving the problems specific to women.”[17]
2. "Are You Listening, Sisters?"
At the International Women’s Tribune in Mexico City, similar ideological lines had been drawn in response to a purportedly “Unified Statement” presented by the Feminist Caucus of International Women’s Year, a group “dominated by correspondents of Ms. Magazine” including celebrated American journalist Gloria Steinem. This “Unified Statement” provided NGOs’ amendments to the “World Plan of Action” set out by the First World Conference on Women. The Feminist Caucus’s “Unified Statement” condemned all forms of nationalism and claimed that “As long as nations go to war over their collective manhood, women will never peacefully influence this repetitious male process... Feminist culture is the only loving and peaceful answer to the existing competitive and aggressive behavior of men and nationalism.”[18]
Of course, this statement was hard to swallow for some of the Latin American delegates who had been persecuted or denied basic human rights under U.S.-backed regimes in their home countries, for example:
- The CIA-assisted coup d’etat to overthrow Salvador Allende’s democratically elected Chilean government in 1973
- U.S. aid to Hugo Banzer’s military dictatorship which toppled President Juan Jose Torres of Bolivia in 1971
- The U.S.-backed Brazilian coup-d'etat against social democrat João Goulart in 1964
- The Ecuadorian junta’s military coup supported by the U.S. government in 1963
- The U.S. government’s funding and training of fascist paramilitary groups in El Salvador throughout the 1960s
- American intelligence operatives repeated attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution in 1959
- And the U.S. occupation of Haiti and Nicaragua throughout the early 20th century
Throughout Latin America, men and women had taken up arms in national liberation struggles against such repressive political regimes, which intended to crush communist and socialist influence in Latin America, thus opening the continent for capitalist countries’ access to its markets, resources, and labour.[19]
In response to the Feminist Caucus’s “Unified Statement,” women delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay created their own document titled Statement of Anti-Imperialist Women, reproduced here in full:
In support of these Latin American women, the U.S. Anti-Imperialist Caucus wrote their own document dissenting against the "Unified Statement" and declaring that “as U.S. anti-imperialist women we support the alternative statement of the eleven countries of Latin American sisters. From the belly of the beast, we support the just liberation struggles of peoples through the world against U.S. imperialism... we reject the ‘liberation’ which has an economic base in U.S. imperialist domination in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. We proclaim or solidarity with our Latin American sisters and say to them that we promise to convey the reality of their struggle to the working class, the housewives, and the intellectuals of our country.”[20]
Similarly, three Canadian delegates drew up their own statement, “Are You Listening, Sisters?” which began emphatically as follows: “As Canadian women we wish to dissociate ourselves from the so-called ‘Unified Statement’ of amendments to the World Plan of Action, which was transmitted to the UN conference on International Women’s Year on June 25th, 1975.” “Are You Listening Sisters?” claimed that women from 11 Latin American countries had been prevented from influencing the “Unified Statement”:
“There has been a persistent campaign to deny their validity as women because they are trying to speak of ‘political conditions’ in their countries... WE DECRY the use of these techniques to divide women at this Tribune, particularly the women of Mexico, and to attempt to close the ears of many of our U.S. sisters here to the suffering of their sisters in Latin America caused by ‘alien domination,’ in this case U.S. domination or imperialism – while all the time calling for unity around a U.S.-oriented document.”[21]
This statement was signed by Charlotte McEwen from Voice of Women (VOW), Margueritta Kleunsch (affiliation unknown), and Sister Helen Ralston, a professor of Sociology at St. Mary’s University. Significantly, this statement also marks the beginning of an incredibly public conflict between Charlotte McEwen and the other members of VOW, Canada's oldest national women’s peace and disarmament group.
3. The Crisis of "Non-Partisan" Feminism
Voice of Women (VOW), was established in 1960 in response to “what appeared to be imminent nuclear war.”[22] Denouncing Cold War politics and the subsequent arms race, VOW resolved to promote total nuclear disarmament and significant reduction of Canadian military expenditures in favour of spending on health and education. In 1962, VOW convened the first international meeting in Canada which included women from China and the Soviet Union. In 1965, the organization began calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the “senseless mass killing” in Vietnam, escalated by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Operation Rolling Thunder.”[23]
Fearing that U.S. military atrocities in Vietnam could lead to all-out nuclear war, VOW urged Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to “condemn publicly the bombing of civilians and the use of napalm, phosphorous, and anti-personnel bombs” and to “ban the export of weapons and war materials to the United States.”[24] Despite VOW’s status as a “non-partisan” and “non-political” organization, they were sometimes criticized for supporting a “communist takeover of Canada,” especially following their decision to host a meeting with women members of North Vietnam’s National Liberation Front in 1968.[25] Throughout the Cold War, unfounded accusations of communism plagued many women’s peace groups in the United States and Canada and at times prevented members from taking part in political analyses or activities deemed “subversive.”[26]
VOW’s Co-founder and Research Coordinator, the pioneering physicist and University of Toronto professor Dr. Ursula Franklin, assisted the organization significantly in gaining knowledge and credibility for their position on disarmament. From 1962-1965, VOW’s Baby Teeth Collection Program helped Franklin to study the levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth, a substance present in the fallout from nuclear weapons testing, which ultimately lead to the end of atmospheric weapons testing in North America.[27] Moreover, Franklin’s comments in the press helped legitimize the peace position against those who claimed that disarmament activists were silly, unserious, and overly idealistic.
Left: Photograph of Merle Hudson (chair woman), Marilyn Aarons (Energy Probe), and Ursula Franklin (scientist) at an educational organized by Women Against Nuclear Technology (9 September 1979), Lilith Finkler fonds, 10-194-S4-F4-I2
In the Winter of 1972, U of T’s student newspaper The Varsity published a series of investigative articles about “war research” conducted at the University. These student journalists questioned their professors' acceptance of research funding from U.S. and Canadian defense contractors, “the development of chemical and biological warfare techniques (CBW), and the consequent chance of causing an ecological disaster.” In the article, Electrical Engineering Professor George Sinclair replied that such a risk is “the price we have to pay to defend ourselves. We can’t be idealistic about war, we must face practicalities. We are not in a position to set rules. If you talk about war research, you have lost your objectivity.”[28]
Similarly, the Defense Research Board claimed that “Canadian research in no way contributed to chemical defoliants the U.S. has used in Vietnam.”[29] Dr. Franklin, on the other hand, used her scientific experience to speak out against CBW research as a means of national defense:
"This ‘defensive’ argument is a cynical and hypocritical myth. Where is the defense capability of a substance so poisonous that a gram is enough to kill a million people? We are doing research for the United States, Britain, and NATO. We are simply a branch laboratory for nations that are preparing agents for military use. We give our information freely to the U.S. and others, and we have no control over whether the use of our research will be used for offensive or defensive purposes. We are no more removed from responsibility for the development of these black weapons than the German scientists who developed nerve gas. The defence posture is merely rhetoric used to couch research that is of no conceivable benefit to mankind."[30]
Dr. Franklin’s words held considerable weight not only because of her record as an accomplished physicist, but also due to her personal history as a Jewish woman who immigrated to Canada after surviving Nazi Germany’s forced labour camps.
Significantly, in these early stages, VOW did not name U.S. imperialism or European colonialism as significant forces of global military violence and preferred instead to adopt an approach which condemned “both sides” for their failure to negotiate. Like the “Unified Statement” presented to the International Women’s Tribune in 1975, VOW defined war as “the most hideous manifestation of the male power game,” often neglecting to include analyses of race, class, or nationality in their denunciation of “male” military violence.[31]
Nevertheless, VOW did participate in certain anti-imperialist causes. In September 1973, for example, VOW opposed the U.S.-backed coup d’etat in Chile. They condemned governmental ties to the Canadian mining company Noranda and its subsidiary Chile Canadian Mines which had seen skyrocketing profits since the illegal CIA-assisted coup. VOW argued that “Noranda is mining in Chile because of better tax terms, cheap non-unionized labour (since any kind of organized labour is outlawed) as well as ease of mining.” Given that the government in Chile had “seized power from a legally elected government through much bloodshed,” VOW stated that “Canada should be consistent in her so-called denunciation of Chile’s military regime” and “deter Canadian businesses from dealing with the Junta.”[32]
Rising opposition to settler-colonial regimes and imperialist violence in the 1970s created friction between some of VOW’s members and local committees. After attending the 1975 International Women’s Year Tribune, Ottawa chapter leader Charlotte McEwen not only helped to write a Canadian declaration of support for the Statement of Anti-Imperialist Women, but also expressed support for the UN resolution which described Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” These positions placed McEwen in conflict with VOW’s national office and coordinator Donna Elliott. According to Elliott, speaking to The Ottawa Journal in December 1976, VOW “has many times in the past 15 years been held responsible for Charlotte McEwen’s opinions and actions which did not reflect Voice of Women opinions at the time.”[33]
“The conflict came to a head,” The Ottawa Journal reported, “when Israeli foreign minister Yigal Allon visited Ottawa in September. Ms. McEwen and The Ottawa branch sent a telegram to Prime Minister Trudeau asking that he speak with the general about Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, who was being held under house arrest in Israel.”[34] McEwen claimed that National VOW had approved this telegram, but the relevant resolution had mysteriously disappeared from the national meeting minutes. She claimed further that “There has been a lobby within the Voice of Women to keep the Middle East from being discussed at all.” According to McEwen and the Ottawa chapter, they had attempted to raise the issue of Israel-Palestine multiple times, only to be told repeatedly that it had not been debated, or alternatively, that VOW did not have enough information with which to engage its members in debate.
Despite this internal opposition, throughout 1976 McEwen hosted numerous discussions on the Middle East through the Ottawa Public Affairs Group, including “A Study Group on the Middle East and its Impact on Canadian Policy” and a public meeting on “Judaic Values and the State of Israel.” The Ottawa chapter also compiled an “Israel-Palestine Fact Sheet” for distribution throughout the membership.[36] By December, however, National VOW announced that they had ousted McEwen from the organization. Following this decision, The Ottawa Journal reported that “McEwen equates Zionism with Racism, a Palestine Liberation Organization position that has been rejected by the Canadian and United States governments.” In response, McEwen wrote the following:
"To set the matter straight about my position on the UN Resolution on Zionism, quoted by your paper: my position on the resolution (which calls Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination”) is not to equate Zionism with racism any more than one would equate butter with food. Instead, I ask: Why all the fuss from the Zionist lobby while the State of Israel continues to implement the Law of Return, which grants automatic ‘citizenship’ to any Jewish person landing in Israel but refuses to allow indigenous Palestinians to return to their homes?"[37]
Clearly, conflict within VOW reflected the more widespread debate which had taken place in the context of UN conferences and NGO Tribunals held to commemorate International Women’s Decade. By the time the UN held their Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, 1985, to assess the decade’s accomplishments, delegates from Israel and The United States threatened to walk out unless the conference removed language equating Zionism with racism. As a result, all references to “Zionism” were removed from the final declaration on Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. Although the word “apartheid” was also hotly debated at this conference, references to the South African system remained in the final document which condemned “all forms of racism and racial discrimination.”[38]
4. "Real Feminism Means Being Revolutionary"
While the 1975-1985 UN Conferences on Women were frequently criticized by attendees for their disorganization and “propagandistic” political speeches, they also influenced scores of women in developing an anti-imperialist consciousness and connected Canadian feminists with activists from around the world, such as the Egyptian physician and political activist Dr. Nawal El Saadawi. Interviewed in 1980, Dr. El Saadawi made the following argument about feminist political activism:
“Real feminism means being revolutionary. To be revolutionary means that one examines the problems of women from all aspects: the historical, the sociological, the economic, and the psychological. And if you carry out this analysis, you should be against the establishment, the patriarchal class system. As a radical feminist, I think you should oppose imperialism, Zionism, feudalism, and inequality between nations, sexes, and between classes.”[39]
Interpreting the history of Zionism as a form of colonization and racial discrimination, Dr. El Saadawi further explained that “The Palestinian women are strong in character. In fighting for a cause, you’re liberated mentally and psychologically. For example, if a woman is walking down the street late at night, along with a gun, she is not thinking about rape and murder. She has transcended these inherited women’s fears. She is now carrying a gun to fight for her land. The Palestinian woman, through her struggle, is changing and being liberated. The same is true about Algerian women, who fought in the 50s and 60s. In every revolution, women are liberated.”[40]
However, El Saadawi also cautioned against subordinating women’s issues to political revolution:
“The woman may be used as a tool in the revolution-- just as she is a tool in marriage, a tool in the hands of the authorities, whether they be revolutionary or not. Because women have no collective power, male authority will tell women to go back home once the revolution is successful.”[41]
Like the anti-imperialist women of Latin America in 1975, Dr. El Saadawi rejected the notion that “Feminist culture is the only loving and peaceful answer to the existing competitive and aggressive behavior of men and nationalism.”[42] In fact, she refused to draw any sharp distinction between “women’s issues” and “political issues”; Speaking on the issue of abortion, for example, El Saadawi argued that “The issue here is colonization. Not only are countries colonized, but also women’s bodies. They have been colonized by their husbands, by the state, and by the patriarchal class system. This colonization has created many phenomena, among them prostitution and illegal abortions. It's not the woman who decides whether to keep a child; it's the husband, the state, the nation. All this is a sort of colonization.”[43] However, she argued, women in colonized countries were focused on more immediate issues of daily survival, such as not having enough firewood, electricity, or food to feed their children.
Since Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 escalation of the U.S. War in Vietnam, anti-colonial feminism had become a new and growing phenomenon within Canadian women’s groups. In fact, many Canadian women entered feminist activism through their opposition to the Vietnam War. For example, celebrated feminist activist Helen Levine helped to organize The Ottawa Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which assisted U.S. “draft dodgers” immigrating to Canada to avoid deployment.[44]
Similarly, women’s liberation groups like the Vancouver Women’s Caucus (VWC) were heavily influenced by anti-Vietnam War organizing; “Whereas the older women’s groups such as the Canadian Federation of University Women, the Women’s Institutes, and Voice of Women had a more institutional focus, women’s liberation groups asserted that, in common with all other oppressed peoples, women’s oppression could be overcome ‘only through a radical and fundamental change in the structure of our society.’”[45] Despite focusing primarily on abortion access, the VWC were heavily monitored and surveilled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) due to "the climate of fear of subversion so prevalent during the Cold War.” According to Christabelle Sethna, a professor of Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, “The Mounties understood any group with real or suspected left-wing attachments as part of a nefarious global coalition to take down democracies.”[46]
The RCMP’s paranoia was perhaps generated in part by the revolutionary symbolism which had spread throughout some factions of the Canadian women’s movement: beginning in the 1960s, the “revolutionary woman” depicted holding a baby, a gun, or a baby and a gun, became a popular symbol of solidarity not only with women of Vietnam, but also with Cuba, El Salvador, Angola, Eritrea, and other anti-imperialist struggles taking place around the world. Feminist organizations’ use of the “revolutionary woman” as an activist symbol demonstrated some young women's growing recognition and support for armed resistance as a legitimate response to the challenges faced by women from colonized countries.[47]
Right: Small textile banner, Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas [federation of Cuban Women] (c.1980s) Myrna Wood fonds, 10-017-S5-F23
In 1981, the Vancouver-based group Women Against Imperialism (WAI) began running educational workshops about “the effects of imperialism on women’s lives around the world” where they illuminated some of these challenges and their precipitating forces:
"We are learning about the poverty, exploitation, and brutality that is the daily ration for women in imperialized countries. We are learning about women in India joining peasant associations to fight the plunder and looting by landlord armies; of mothers’ committees in Latin America looking for their ‘disappeared’ daughters and sons and relatives, tortured and murdered by totalitarian governments; of women in the ghettos of the Philippines organizing for decent work, food to eat, and a roof over their heads; of the women in many countries joining national liberation armies and waging guerilla warfare. Thousands of women in different countries are choosing to struggle against the hold that foreign corporations, financial institutions, and governments have on their lives."[48]
According to Women Against Imperialism, while “the most common form of imperialism used to be the formal annexation of another country for the economic gain of the colonizer, as was practices by the British Empire,” the “new form of imperialism” involved a kind of “neo-colonialism” operated through business corporations, financial institutions, and nation-states.[49]
WAI paid special attention to exploitative conditions created and maintained by transnational corporations. For example, in the case of Chile, they noted that “the CIA was determined to sabotage [Allende’s] government as it was beginning to nationalize industry and drive out the foreign investments of North American based transnationals.” On a global scale, they argued, “the transnationals have staked out their claims over the minerals, fossil fuels, and arable land of the imperialized countries. At present the [imperialist] core, with only 30% of the world’s population, consumes 80% of the world’s energy production.” Accordingly, “the state supports transnationals in their never-ceasing drive to increase profits and locate new markets and in their increasing reliance on the natural resources and labour power of the Third World.” These corporations also made use of women workers, who were seen as “both a docile and cheap labour source” for menial factory work.[50]
WAI also decried so-called “international development” and “aid” for its racist and sexist attempts at “population control” in the so-called “developing countries.” They explained how contraceptives such as the Dalkon shield (an intrauterine device) and Depo Provera (an injection which prevents pregnancy for 3-6 months) were shipped out by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) after they were banned in the United States due to side effects including infections, malignant tumors, and death.[51]
Despite the “high profile of U.S. imperialism,” WAI emphasized that “Canada itself is a colonized country; the mass genocide of native people being imperialism in its most stark form.” Canada, they explained, “is also an imperialist and colonizing force… Canada and Canada-based corporations intervene directly and profit from the exploitation of Third World Countries. Canadian investment in the Third World is increasing… Canada has more trading and investment in the Caribbean than any other part of the world. Canadian banks control 60-90% of the banking in Commonwealth Caribbean countries. At the end of 1969, direct Canadian investment in South Africa was estimated at $70 million, with Canadian-based corporations such as SunLife, Massey Ferguson and Bata being involved. Black workers can be employed and paid below poverty level wages, thereby handsomely increasing profits.”[52]
Lastly, WAI asserted that women from the imperialist core would have to make sacrifices to support women globally: “Since the end of the Vietnam war more and more national liberation struggles and winning and more colonized peoples are claiming their right to self-determination. As this happens, we in the capitalist centers feel the crunch more. Our high standard of living is so dependent on the exploitation of the Third World, that when the Third World refuses that exploitation, the developed countries lose out on cheap natural resources and cheap labour. Our prices go up, our wages don’t. The media portrays Third World people as communist terrorists.” As such, WAI concluded, feminists should resist the temptation to view armed revolutionaries as barriers to a just and peaceful society, and instead develop “a political analysis whereby we can understand the world and who we’re fighting.”[53]
5. Disarm, Divest, Dissent
The National Liberation Front (NLF) victory in Vietnam in 1973 marked the end of an era characterized by widespread decolonization throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, as Latin American delegates argued in their Statement of Anti-Imperialist Women for the International Women’s Tribune, freedom from European colonial rule did not necessarily lead to freedom from economic exploitation or destructive political influence. Moreover, World War II had led both to the consolidation of white rule in South Africa, and to the establishment of Israel as a Jewish ethnocracy.
Nevertheless, perhaps in part due to global connections fostered by events such as the International Women’s Decade, anti-imperialist sentiment infused many feminist groups in Canada through the final decades of the 20th century. Pressing beyond calls for peace and nuclear disarmament, Canadian women began organizing more specifically against forced displacement, occupation, apartheid, and resource extraction. What follows is an extensive (but far from comprehensive) overview of anti-imperialist organizations found in our collections:
Domestic workers’ rights groups who formed throughout the late 1970s and early 1990s were directly influenced by immigrant women’s anti-imperialist organizing. On October 27th, 1979, Toronto-based women’s organizations Employment Services for Immigrant Women (ESIW) and The Housewives Initiative co-sponsored a forum titled “A View from the Kitchen: Immigrant Women Speak Out on the Value of Housework” at Ryerson University, featuring president of the Jamaican National Union of Democratic Teachers Joan French.
Addressing the global issue of resource extraction by multinational corporations, French connected “the struggle of immigrant domestics” with “the Third World Struggle to redress the economic imbalance between developed and developing countries” by arguing that “profits from Third World countries end up in developed countries, so we come to developed countries like Canada to reclaim some of that wealth.” Immigrants, she stated, “are here by right—the right of their labour performed on behalf of the developed countries both in the Third World and in those developed countries when they go there as immigrants.”[54]
Right: Program for “A View from the Kitchen: Immigrant Women Speak Out on the Value of Housework” at Ryerson College, Toronto (27 October 1979) Toronto Wages for Housework Committee fonds, 10-008-S6-F8
Similarly, Sherona Hall, spokesperson for the Committee Against the Deportation of Immigrant Women (CADIW), crafted arguments in support of Jamaican immigrants that decried Canada’s imperialist investments in other countries:
"Immigrants, primarily those from third world countries, have been used as a source of cheap labour in this country by Canadian corporate interests such as Noranda Mines, Inco, Falcon Bridge, Alcan, and financial institutions such as Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, [with their] ‘massive imperialist investment in third world countries.’ Men and women in the Caribbean and Latin America, for example, are forced to work for an average of $40.00 per month in factories and mines owned by Canadian corporations. During a period of economic expansion in Canada, these same men and women are encouraged to emigrate and work at substandard wages in this country. Jobs that Canadian workers are reluctant to accept; hotel and office cleaning, dishwashing, factory and construction work, have historically been filled by immigrants."[55]
Furthermore, she stated, while Canada “donates a hundred million dollars in ‘aid’ to the Jamaican government, they simultaneously deport large numbers of Jamaican mothers and children back to Jamaica, creating an increased economic burden on the Jamaican economy.”[56]
Left: Photograph of Sherona Hall speaking at podium during an IWD Rally (March 1978) Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, CWMA Collection, 10-001-S3-I226
The 1980s would also see an increase in Filipino women applying to become temporary domestic workers in Canada. These women had fled the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, a twenty-year period marked by brutal political repression including extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, electoral fraud, suppression of the press, incarceration of political dissidents, and other human rights abuses. During this period, progressive women in Toronto’s Filipino community continued to organize against the Marcos regime from abroad, joining anti-imperialist organizations such as the International Association of Filipino Patriots (IAFP) and The Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship (CAMD).
These groups also began to organize against repressive conditions created by Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Programs which paid less than the minimum wage, did not provide a pathway to permanent residency, and left workers isolated and unprotected from human rights abuses by their employers. The latter was especially true for foreign domestic workers, who were required to live with their employers for the duration of their time in Canada. Anti-imperialist organizers of the IAFP and the CAMD eventually formed the Ad Hoc Committee of Filipino Domestic Workers for Landed Status, working closely with the International Coalition to End Domestics’ Exploitation (INTERCEDE) to demand landed status for all domestic workers in Canada.
Similarly, The Jewish Feminist Anti-Fascist League (JFAFL), The Jewish Committee to End the Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza (JWCEO), and The Palestinian Women’s Association formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily based in Toronto. These groups helped to raise awareness about Palestinian Women’s struggle against Israeli militarism and occupation, to dissociate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, and to counter-mobilize against what former VOW member Charlotte McEwen called “the Zionist lobby.”[59]
According to Rise Up! Digital Feminist Archive, the JWCEO “held regular vigils at the Israeli consulate on Bloor Street and other locations within the Jewish community. They sponsored educational events and demonstrations, sometimes with other Jewish groups, sometimes with Palestinian groups... In a sense, JWCEO was a precursor to those organizations in Toronto and around the world who work in support of the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.” Their membership also expanded rapidly in response to The Gulf War of 1990-91.[60][61]
In 1992, perhaps signaling a change in Voice of Women’s orientation towards conflict in the Middle East, Jewish feminist and VOW member Madeleine Gilchrist visited Israeli and Palestinian women in the Occupied Territories, including members of The Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees (PFWAC). Gilchrist, who had already been personally involved battling for freedom of the press and prisoners’ rights in Israel, helped to publicize two of PFWAC’s projects in Canada: The Siha Baby food project, developed in response to the Palestinian communities’ need for an inexpensive high protein baby food, and The Brass and Enamel project, which trained women to create “Enamel plates of different sizes and shape having Palestinian folkloric and nationalistic flavour” and “Brass frames cut and worked to enclose designs of Palestinian embroideries.”[63] [64] These pieces were then sold to fund PFWAC programs including family support networks, kindergartens and nurseries, legal advocacy for women political prisoners, literacy programs, and hot meals for preschoolers.[65]
Rising opposition to South African government policies throughout the 1980s and 1990s would also see the proliferation of anti-apartheid organizations, especially in Toronto: The Anti-Apartheid Coalition of Toronto (AACT) formed in 1985 to promote Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against the apartheid regime. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Explicitly defining white people as superior, apartheid entailed the segregation of social events, public facilities, employment opportunities, and housing determined by the National Party’s racial classification. In their anti-apartheid literature, AACT stated that “ever since South Africa was colonized the indigenous population has always resisted. When their organizations were banned, they formed new ones. When their leaders were harassed, detained, and killed, new leaders replaced them. Now more than ever WE MUST RAISE OUR LEVEL OF SUPPORT TO THEIR LEVEL OF STRUGGLE.”[66]
During apartheid, many South African activists were jailed for their opposition to racial segregation, including “Sharpeville Six” member Theresa Ramashamola, the first woman in South Africa to receive the death sentence. In response, the Toronto South African Women’s Day Committee began a campaign to “Stop the Execution of Theresa Ramashamola, Release All Political Prisoners and Allow the Safe Emergence of Activists in Hiding!” Furthermore, they stated, “all South Africans must have the right to organize and participate in the creation of a free, non-racial, and democratic society!”[67] Accused of participating in the murder of Governor Mr. Khuzwayo Dimini during the Vaal area townships uprising of December 1984, Ramashamola was exonerated during the Truth and Reconciliation Committee hearings which took place in 1997, during which she discussed her eight years of torture and confinement in Pretoria Central Prison.[68]
In July 1990, The Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, and Lesbians and Gays Against Apartheid co-sponsored a visit and talk by the Black anti-apartheid, gay rights, and AIDS activist Simon Nkoli, who had spent time years of his life imprisoned under false treason and terrorism charges. Upon his release, Nkoli organized South Africa’s first pride parade and influenced the African National Congress (ANC) to enshrine gay rights in the South African constitution following the fall of apartheid.[69]
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian feminist organizations also opposed intergovernmental military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and neoliberal policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which many viewed as vehicles for military aggression and economic exploitation. According to Stacey Stack, writing in 1998:
“The fight against the negative effects of free trade [in Canada] has encompassed the agendas of women's groups since the beginning of negotiations for the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA). The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and its then vice president, Marjorie Griffin Cohen, developed this opposition. [Cohen] argued that women would most likely feel the brunt of the impact CUSFTA because they dominate the work force of Canada's most vulnerable, less competitive, branch-plant manufacturing industries. This domination has been especially evident in Canada's garment industry, where women account for 90% of the work force, and where 80,000 jobs have been lost since the implementation of CUSFTA. While some of these women are able to find new jobs, these jobs tend to be lower-paying, high-turnover jobs concentrated in clerical, sales, and service industries; the majority of which are part-time and nonunion...Thus, numerous women in Canada are losing their ability to participate in stable, secure, and high-paying jobs once exemplified in the unionized manufacturing sector.”[70]
According to Cohen and the NAC, NAFTA helped to consolidate economic domination by multinational corporations, while neglecting to ameliorate negative effects on the lowest paid members of the industrial workforce.
Similarly, as the Committee of Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (COSPES) argued in 1982, “the situation of women in El Salvador, as in other Third World countries, is made worse by the economic domination of industrialized powers. Capitalist penetration most often reinforces the privileges, reactionary traditions, and anti-women prejudices of the local ruling classes… in spite of the appalling conditions they live in, Salvadoran women are fighting back… women have been an integral part of the armed struggle, following the path of their Nicaraguan sisters, preceding their Guatemalan sisters. While they have been forced to take up arms by an extreme right-wing dictatorship supported by the United States rulers, with the complicity of the Canadian government, our struggle and theirs is really one and the same.”[71]
In October 1982, some feminists took up the call for “armed struggle” against Canadian complicity in U.S. military violence. Three members of Direct Action, a Vancouver-based urban guerilla group, loaded explosives into a stolen pickup truck, drove to Toronto, and detonated a bomb outside of Litton Industries, a manufacturer of American cruise missile components. The bomb injured employees and police officers and delayed the plant’s production by one week. Direct Action member Ann Hansen was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Kingston Prison for Women and stated in her closing remarks that the moral obligation to resist armament corporations like Litton Industries “far overrides our obligation to obey man-made laws...I felt that it was necessary to begin the development of a resistance movement that could carry out sabotage and expropriations free from the surveillance of the police.”[72]
While many feminists disagreed with Direct Action’s militancy, others pointed to the hypocrisy of arresting citizens for bombing a bomb factory, referring to Litton Industries as “the real terrorists.”[73] The action also rallied support for the Refuse the Cruise march which took place two weeks later, co-sponsored by the Toronto Disarmament Network (TDN) and the Against Cruise Testing Coalition (ACT) and attended by several feminist organizations including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and Women’s Action for Peace.[74] “Refuse the Cruise” became a rallying cry against the manufacture of cruise missiles in Canada, and in 1983, Women’s Action for Peace once again organized a rally outside Litton’s Toronto factory, during which 29 women were convicted for trespassing on private property and attempting to conduct a citizens’ arrest of Litton president Ronald Keating. Preaching non-violent civil disobedience, several of these women returned four days later to continue their protest.[75]
Protestors being dragged by policement during the Women's Action for Peace demonstration at Litton, Toronto (14 November 1983) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S3-I407
Protestors being dragged by policement during the Women's Action for Peace demonstration at Litton, Toronto (14 November 1983) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S3-I407
In the 1980s, feminists acted in solidarity with the Innu campaign against the militarization of Ntesian, protesting the expansion of a NATO Tactical Fighter Weapons Training Centre on Innu land in Goose Bay, Labrador. Peter Penashue, a member of the campaign, wrote to feminist organizations stating that “we are attempting to organize a concerted campaign against the increasing abuse of our territory and our People by the air forces of West Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, as low-level, high-speed training by fighter bombers continues and increases.”[76] These training flights roared just above the treetops, disturbing the Innu People’s traditional hunting grounds and threatening the local caribou population. Many Innu activists were arrested when they occupied one of the military runways to block these flights. Feminists rallied for their cause under the NAC’s Survival of the Planet Committee and the NATO Out of Nittisan Coalition.[77] Significantly, this issue has returned to the Innu people today as the Canadian Department of Defence plans to resume low-level flight training over the region.[78]
In conclusion, the material in this exhibit has demonstrated how feminist movements shifted and changed in response to competing crises of the 20th century, including wars of national liberation, the globalization of industry, the Cold War, Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, and the consolidation of military power through international alliances like NATO. During this time, Canadian feminists pushed each other to define “women’s issues” – some argued that Canadian women should limit their focus to those problems which affect them directly, such as reproductive justice, the gender pay gap, pornography, and violence against women. Others, like the Leila Khaled Collective, emphatically believed that “When we say that we must understand the oppression of women before we can understand other people’s oppression, we make a split that most women cannot make.”[79]
Women Against Imperialism: Exploring Feminist Resistance to War, Occupation, and Apartheid invites you to consider the following: How have anti-imperialist feminists historically fought for recognition and legitimacy from the wider Canadian women’s movement? How did Canadian feminists reconcile their position as citizens of “the imperialist core” with their desire to support women in the “Third World”? How did the women’s peace movement debate and grapple with “armed struggle” as an anti-imperialist tactic? And finally, what does it mean to host an exhibit about anti-imperialist feminism at The University of Ottawa, where just this past summer students were actively protesting investments that, in their view, make the university economically complicit in the ongoing violence against Palestinian people?
This exhibit is but a snapshot of the anti-imperialist activism that appears in our collections. To view more of this material, please visit us in person at the Archives and Special Collections in Morisset Library, Room 039.
Researched and Written by: Meghan Tibbits-Lamirande, scholar-in-residence, Archives and Special Collections
Works Cited
- Diana Sierra Becerra, Jennifer Guglielmo, and Michelle Joffroy, “What is Imperialism?” National Domestic Workers Alliance, https://www.dwherstories.com/timeline/what-is-imperialism
- United Nations, “Report of the World Conference of International Women’s Year” (19 June – 2 July 1975), CWMA Collection, 10-001-S6-SS8-F7
- Ibid.
- IWY Mexico Tribune 1975, National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds,10-024-S2-SS2-F15
- Maria Eriksen, “Report on the IWY Tribune in Mexico City,” National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds,10-024-S2-SS2-F15
- IWY Mexico Tribune 1975, National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds,10-024-S2-SS2-F15
- United Nations, “Report of the World Conference of International Women’s Year” (19 June – 2 July 1975), CWMA Collection, 10-001-S6-SS8-F7, p. 7
- The International Women’s Year Secretariat, “Meeting in Mexico: World Conference of the International Women’s Year, 1975,” CWMA collection, 10-001-S6-SS8-F7, p. 27
- For more on the formation of Israel see Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (1992); Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007); and Rashid Khalidi The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2021). For more on the establishment of South African apartheid, see Okechukwu Ibeanu, “Apartheid, Destabilization and Displacement: The Dynamics of the Refugee Crisis in Southern Africa” (1990); Adrian Guelke, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid (2004); and Daniel Magaziner (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of South African History (2020). For more on the relationship between Zionism and apartheid see Ilan Pappe (ed.), Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid (2015).
- The International Women’s Year Secretariat, “Meeting in Mexico: World Conference of the International Women’s Year, 1975,” CWMA collection, 10-001-S6-SS8-F7, p. 26
- Sarah Irving, Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation (2012).
- United Nations, “The Question of Palestine” (2024), https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/
- “A Paper from the Leila Khaled Collective” (1970), CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F1426, p. 1-3
- “A Paper from the Leila Khaled Collective” (1970), CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F1426, p. 4
- Ibid.
- Terry Padgham, “Report on the International Women’s Year Congress for Women” (October 1975) National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds,10-024-S2-SS2-F15
- Julie Bubnick, “Report on IWY Tribune, Mexico City, June 19 – July 2, 1975,” National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds,10-024-S2-SS2-F15
- Qtd. in Germaine Greer, “’Phoney’ Manifesto comes Under Fire,” Xilonen (20 June 1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- “Statement of Anti-Imperialist Women from the Following Countries of Latin America, Drawn Up at the International Women’s Year Tribune in Mexico City” (27 June 1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- U.S. Anti-Imperialist Caucus, “U.S. Women Against Imperialism” (30 June 1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Charlotte McEwen, Margueritta Kleunsch, and Sister Helen Ralston, “Are You Listening, Sisters? Canadian Women Speak Up” (1 July 1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- “Voice of Women: History and Accomplishments 1960-1975” (c.1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Kathleen MacPherson, Press Release (10 February 1965) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Muriel Duckworth, Press Release (6 December 1967) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Letter to the editor, “Communist Supporters?” The Ottawa Journal (7 December 1968) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- See Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, Just Watch Us: RCMP Surveillance of the Women's Liberation Movement in Cold War Canada (2018).
- Farah Badr, “Experiments explained: Baby Tooth Survey,” The Varsity (25 September 2017) https://thevarsity.ca/2017/09/25/experiments-explained-baby-tooth-survey/
- Bob Bettson, “U of T war research: ‘If industry benefits, people benefit.’” The Varsity (2 February 1972) Voice of Women fonds, 10-091-F7
- Carroll Holland, “Visit Research Sites: Voice of Women Protests at Defence Research Establishment,” The Ottawa Journal (30 May 1970) Voice of Women fonds, 10-091-F4
- Mark Starowicz, “Canada is a World Leader in Germ and Gas Warfare,” The Toronto Star (20 December 1969) Voice of Women fonds, 10-091-F7
- Terry Padgham, Letter to VOW members (September 1974) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Marte Mussel, “Points regarding Canadian trade with Chile (for letters to MPs and local papers)” (c. 1973) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Nick Hunter, “Protesters protest their top protester,” The Ottawa Journal (16 December 1976) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F90, 10-020-S7-F91, and 10-020-S7-F92
- Charlotte McEwen, “No equation but a question,” The Ottawa Journal (22 December 1976) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- “Women’s Conference Ends,” The Ukiah Daily Journal (28 July 1985) Women's conference ends. The Ukiah Daily Journal (Ukiah, California) 28 July 1985, p 8 - Newspapers.com™
- Interview with Nawal El Saadawi, “Real Feminism Means Being Revolutionary,” Newsfront International (October 1980) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S2-SS131-F4
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Germaine Greer, “’Phoney’ Manifesto comes Under Fire,” Xilonen (20 June 1975) Ottawa Women’s Place fonds, 10-020-S7-F92
- Interview with Nawal El Saadawi, “Real Feminism Means Being Revolutionary,” Newsfront International (October 1980) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S2-SS131-F4
- “Vietnam war defector and protest records” (1963-1971) Helen Levine fonds, 10-006-S4-F26, 10-006-S4-F27, and 10-006-S4-F28
- Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP,” Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009) p. 469.
- Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP,” Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009) p. 476.
- For more on the “revolutionary woman” as symbol see Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Radicals on the Road Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (2013); and Thy Phu, Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam (2022)
- Women Against Imperialism, “Workshop #1: Women and Imperialism” (June 1981) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3790, p.1
- Ibid.
- Women Against Imperialism, “Workshop #1: Women and Imperialism” (June 1981) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3790, p.2
- Ibid.
- Women Against Imperialism, “Introduction to ‘Women in Canada’ Workshop” (June 1981) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3790, p. 1-2
- Women Against Imperialism, “Introduction to ‘Women in Canada’ Workshop” (June 1981) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3790, p. 3-4
- Joan French, “Housework and the Third World.” Presentation prepared for the forum “A View from the Kitchen: Immigrant Women Speak Out on the Value of Housework” at Ryerson College, Toronto (27 October 1979) Toronto Wages for Housework fonds, 10-008-S6-F8
- Sherona Hall, “CADIW Position Paper” (c. 1977), Committee Against the Deportation of Immigrant Women (CADIW) CMWA Collection, 10-001-S1-F629
- Ibid.
- Judith Ramirez, interviewer. “Expelled ‘radical’ domestics fight the Filipino right,” The Toronto Clarion (12 March 1982) Frances Gregory fonds, 10-094-S2-SS2-F17
- Ibid.
- Treyf Podcast, “From the Archives: The Jewish Feminist Anti-Fascist League (Jewish Digest, 1993),” https://www.boomplay.com/episode/611801
- Lilith Finkler fonds, 10-194-S2 and 10-194-S4
- “The Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza,” RiseUp Digital Feminist Archive, https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/activism/organizations/jewish-womens-committee-to-end-the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-gaza-jwceo/
- Madeleine Gilchrist, “Impressions of my journey back to Israel,” Voices 3.4 (1992) Madeleine Gilchrist fonds, 10-148-S6-F2, p.8
- The Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees, Women’s Action Diary 1996, Madeleine Gilchrist fonds, 10-148-S6-F1
- The Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees, The Program and Internal Platform of the Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees in the Occupied Territories (1998), Madeleine Gilchrist fonds, 10-148-S6-F5
- Brochure, “The Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees in the Occupied Palestinian State” (1991), Madeleine Gilchrist fonds, 10-148-S6-F1
- Anti-Apartheid Coalition of Toronto, “Our History” (March 1986) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F110
- South Africa Women’s Day Committee, “Stop the Execution of Theresa Ramashamola!” (8 August 1987) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3138
- South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Human Rights Violations, Theresa Ramashamola, Johannesburg Prisons Hearing Day 2 (22 July 1997) https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/special/prison/ramasham.htm
- Lesbians and Gays Against Apartheid, Event Flyer (July 1990) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F1538
- Stacey Stack, “Women and NAFTA: Challenging Economic Instability,” http://depts.washington.edu/canada/nafta/98chapters/15stacknafta98.htm
- The Committee of Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, “El Salvador: Women in Revolution” (1982) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S2-SS86-F2
- British Columbia Court of Appeal (19 March 1986) http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs5/27CCC3d142.html
- “The Real Terrorists: Litton-Red Hot-B.C. Hydro” (4 June 1984) Poster. CWMA Collection, 10-001-S5-I255
- Women’s Action for Peace – Litton Systems Canada Limited (1984) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3994 and 10-001-S1-F3995
- Ibid.
- Peter Penashue, Innu Campaign against the militarization of Ntesian, circular letter (11 September 1984) National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds, 10-024-S4-SS5-F20
- Survival of the Planet Committee – NATO Base in Labrador, National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds, 10-024-S4-SS5-F20
- Rob Antle and Patrick Butler, “Return of low-level flight training over Labrador on German air force's radar,” CBC News (28 February 2024) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-5-wing-goose-bay-german-low-level-training-proposal-1.7126646
- “A Paper from the Leila Khaled Collective” (1970), CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F1426, p. 4
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