Cover Image: Members of the Working Women Community Centre attend a demonstration in Toronto 1983, Working Women Community Centre (WWCC) fonds, 10-029-S2-F3.
After the 1974 National Conference on the Law and Women in Windsor, the women of NAWL decided to host an inaugural conference which would take place the following year. While 1975 had been dubbed International Women’s Year, the continued discrimination of women under Canadian law served to bolster NAWL’s claim that the country’s commitment to women’s equality had been largely superficial. Themed around “Women and Work,” this conference not only outlined and critiqued laws which functioned to preserve women’s inferior economic status, but also defined and ratified a multitude of resolutions that gave form and shape to the organization. These resolutions spanned numerous legal categories, from property law to sexual assault. [1] Furthermore, NAWL outlined their intention to form a national network with an emphasis on local organization, by forming caucuses in the law schools of each province, by forming caucuses in the law schools of each province, which they had accomplished by the time their official constitution was adopted in 1977.
This year, in partnership with NAWL, the University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections celebrates NAWL’s 50th anniversary by delving into the organization’s history, including their landmark achievements, legal interventions, organizational challenges, and their undeniable impact on Canadian society. While this section will focus primarily on NAWL’s concerns regarding Women and Labour, you may click the following links to learn about The Founding of NAWL, and their important work on Violence Against Women, Reproductive Justice, and Marriage Equality.
As NAWL co-founder Shirley Greenberg argued in her 1977 article “Why Bother?” denial of the economic value of women’s work had been “especially crippling” to the twin goals of gender equality and human rights. [2] Having worked as a legal secretary for several years before enrolling in law school and cofounding NAWL, Greenberg was keenly aware of the lack of respect afforded to traditionally “feminine” jobs. [3]
Like her fellow NAWL members, she sought to tackle the juridical roots of women’s inferior economic status. Similarly, in the introduction to NAWL’s first official conference program on “Law, Women and Work,” co-founder Lynn Kaye argued that the feminist movement’s “early absorption with discussion and consciousness-raising... has now progressed to the action stage.” [4]
Right Image: Introduction to program for NAWL's "Women and Work" Conference (1975), NAWL fonds (10-036), box 9, file 12, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
In this introduction to the "Women and Work" conference, Lynn Kaye noted further that “The task seems obvious: to translate the ideas and aspirations of the movement into language which can be transformed into legislation, and to organize to get legislation that can affect change.” [4] Recognizing the devaluation of women’s labour as a widespread societal problem, NAWL sought to influence legislation in three distinct but overlapping domains: the value of women’s labour outside the home; the value of women’s labour inside the home; and discrimination against women in the legal profession specifically. During this conference, the members of NAWL also outlined their Constitution, which would detail the organization’s primary aims and objectives, as listed in the image below:
These objectives, outlined in 1975, would serve as the impetus for NAWL’s future projects and initiatives.
Lynn Kaye’s address to the inaugural conference on “Women and Work” reflected NAWL’s understanding that legal reforms for women, until that point, had largely benefitted upper- or middle-class white women, neglecting to address the issues of women who were multiply marginalized or did not own property. As Kaye explained, the last major legislative change to fundamentally alter the status of women had occurred nearly 100 years previously, when the Married Women’s Property Act was enacted in 1884. This Act, though crucial to women’s suffrage and the recognition of women as full citizens, “was really enacted for the benefit of propertied women.” Moreover, according to Kaye, while more women than ever before were participating in the paid labour force, “the wage differentials between male and female workers have increased and the female labour force has become concentrated in single occupational categories.” [4] Therefore, Kaye argued,
Our demands should address the social issue at the time. If there are no men in a certain job category, then equal pay for equal work is an irrelevant demand. It is the undervalued nature of women’s work that is the basic social problem. We should be careful to distinguish the social and legal issues with a view to formulating the best policy to benefit the largest number of women. [4]
Recognizing “the undervalued nature of women’s work” as “the basic social problem” meant that NAWL did not limit the scope of their proposed legislation to work performed exclusively outside the home. Their concerns with domestic labour reflected the importance of Murdoch v. Murdoch, a case which had galvanized attendees at the Windsor conference during the previous year. The Murdoch case had established that a woman who worked unpaid labour for her husband's business or farm did not have a vested interest in her husband’s property upon the breakdown of their marriage. For many women’s activists, this decision reflected the standards set by decades of Canadian law which positioned husband and wife in a master-servant relationship, and reestablished precedent for the husband’s implied legal ownership over his wife’s capacity to labour.
Left Image: Claudia Baskerville, "Women must now act law seminar told" (27 September 1975) and "Laws 'with teeth' goal of women" (29 September 1975), The Ottawa Journal, Shirley E. Greenberg fonds (10-185), box 1, file 9, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
Four years later, at their 1979 Conference on Women and Property in Calgary, NAWL would further underscore the importance of the Murdoch case by including a “Summary of Current and Proposed Provincial Matrimonial Property Laws in Canada” written by the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW). This summary, written in 1977, explicitly noted that “The Supreme Court decision on the Irene Murdoch case is still the rule” in the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Yukon. [5] For many women, this represented the continued denial of the economic value of women’s housework, which historically freed husbands from domestic responsibility and allowed men, as a group, to invest more time and energy in money-making ventures.
In the following correspondence, Shirley Greenberg writes to the Ontario Committee on the Administration of Justice regarding NAWL Ottawa's position on family law reform, underscoring the importance of shared marital property and enshrining legal definitions of marriage as an equal partnership:
Of course, like many large feminist organizations in this period, NAWL was sometimes criticized for its relatively affluent membership and its mandate to convene biannual conferences with the help of government funding. A commenter in the University of Manitoba student newspaper, The Manitoban, found fault with NAWL’s 1975 conference on “Women and Work” by writing that “it was decided that these professionals should not TELL working women how to organize, but would serve as aids to help working women accomplish their goals. This sounds fine, except that there was no opportunity for working women to make their goals known at the conference … the only time bona fide working women were out in force was when they were waiting on the conference delegates at two costly banquets." [6]
It is interesting, however, that the author of this editorial did not view the numerous legal secretaries in attendance as "bona fide working women,” even though these workers had recently begun their struggle against unfair wages and a lack of job security in the profession (legal secretaries could be fired at any time and for any reason, and rectifying this injustice was a major tenet of Windsor legal secretaries' historic efforts to unionize in 1974). [7] It is possible, then, that this author’s remarks reflect social attitudes of the period which did not view traditionally feminine labour as "real” or "bona fide” work.
Another crucial aspect of NAWL’s mandate, established in 1975, was to educate and consult with the public on legal issues affecting women. To that end, one of NAWL’s first collective efforts following the “Women and Work” conference was their 1975 Summer Project, sponsored by the University of Ottawa caucus. For this project, a series of six educational workshops were held on “Employment Laws and Human Rights”; “Marriage, Separation, Divorce, Custody, Property”; “Taxes, Credit, Money,”; “Citizenship and Immigration, New Canadian Women”; and “Criminal Law and Women.” The concluding workshop, “Action: Where Do We Go from Here?” focused on translating these issues into real proposals for legislative change.
At this final seminar, which took place over the final weekend in September, NAWL co-founder Peggy Mason stated that “Economic liberation has got to be the core of the women’s liberation movement.” Despite criticism to the contrary, in the earliest years of their organization, NAWL focused their energies on economic discrimination against women workers, whether those women were housewives, clerical workers, or ”bona fide working women.” [8]
Left Image: NAWL Ottawa caucus, Flyer for Summer Project (June to August 1975), Shirley E. Greenberg fonds (10-185), box 1, file 2, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
As Shirley Greenberg wrote in the booklet “Why Does Sex Discrimination Persist?” in 1975, the most important legal areas for women were marriage laws, which regulated the relationship between husband and wife, and employment laws, which regulated the relationship between employer and employee. [9] In the years that followed, NAWL would continue to focus on women’s economic liberation in work and marriage, convening numerous conferences and workshops on affirmative action, women and credit, parental benefits and childcare, women and property, women in the workforce, domestic workers, income tax, and women on welfare. NAWL members became the authors of frequent articles and op-eds on these topics and lobbied the federal and provincial governments for legislative change.
Five years later, NAWL would prove their power and influence in a presentation to the Joint Committee on the Constitution in December 1980, which solicited feedback from Canadians on the proposed draft of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Represented by members Deborah Acheson, Tamra Thompson, Pamela Medjuck, and Monique Charlebois, NAWL opened their presentation by stating emphatically that “we cannot and do not endorse the entrenchment of a Charter as poorly articulated and substantively inadequate as this one.” As the records demonstrate, NAWL’s presentation significantly influenced section 15 of the Charter, also known as “Equality Rights.” [10]
Originally titled “Non-Discrimination Rights” in the federal government’s Charter proposal, NAWL argued that section 15 should set an affirmative standard as opposed to one of negation. As Acheson stated during her section of the presentation, “The value-charged word ‘discrimination’ implies something bad. Much of the discrimination which offends women may be fairly described as paternal benevolence.” NAWL further argued that the phrase “Everyone has the right to equality before the law and to the equal protection of the law” should be changed to include “and equal benefit of the law.” They referenced the Superior court cases of Canada v. Lavell (1973) and Bliss v. Canada (1978), which were sex-discrimination lawsuits in which the courts ruled that discriminatory laws did not violate the principle of “equality before the law” as outlined by the Canadian Bill of Rights, in effect prior to the Charter. [10]
We cannot and do not endorse the entrenchment of a Charter as poorly articulated and substantively inadequate as this one. In our view the proposed Charter offers little protection to Canadians and well cement inequalities now existing within our society, particularly insofar as women are concerned” [10]
- Deborah Acheson, NAWL Presentation to the Joint Committee on the Constitution, November 1980
NAWL also suggested that section 15 should include reference to “marital status, physical or mental disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, and previous conviction.” If these categories could not be included, NAWL argued that the language of section 15 should be left open-ended, to ensure that the entrenched legislation could be applied to any form of discrimination. Significantly, section 15 now guarantees “equal benefit of the law without discrimination,” and includes open-ended language which has been used to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people, among others. [10] In Egan v. Canada (1995), for example, the Supreme Court of Canada held that although "sexual orientation" is not listed as a ground for discrimination in section 15 of the Charter, it constitutes an equivalent ground on which claims of discrimination may be based. [11]
At this appearance, NAWL also expressed their concerns about the composition of the Supreme Court of Canada, at a time when no women had been nominated as judges of the court (the first female judge of the Supreme Court would not be appointed until 1982). NAWL argued that the Supreme Court should include “a representative number” of women, given that judicial decisions on sex discrimination were often loaded with sexist biases and assumptions. This suggestion reflected recommendations set out by the CACSW ten years previously, which emphasized the appointment of women to all levels of the judiciary. [10]
Between the release of CACSW’s recommendations and NAWL’s presentation to the Joint Committee, eight male justices had been appointed to the Supreme Court. As Monique Charlebois asserted, “Law does not exist in a vacuum. It must be interpreted and applied with a full understanding of the country and its people. We doubt that a full understanding of the Canadian people is possible when only one sex is represented on the court.” When asked to elaborate on “what it is you mean by a representative number of women on the Supreme Court,” Charlebois answered succinctly: “52.4 per cent.” [10]
Left Image: Cover of Jurisfemme, vol. 9, no. 3 (1989), published by NAWL.
The need for a more representative judiciary at all levels would become even clearer over the course of NAWL’s increasing work on Violence Against Women beginning in the 1980s. To learn more about NAWL’s work on Violence Against Women and women in the criminal justice system, CLICK HERE.
This exhibit was created by Meghan Tibbits-Lamirande, ARCS storyteller-in-residence
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WORKS CITED
[1] National Association of Women and the Law, Women and Work Conference Program. Winnipeg, MB, January 30-February 2, 1975, box 9, file 12, NAWL fonds (10-036), box 9, file 19, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[2] Greenberg, Shirley. “Why Bother?” Draft article, February 1977, NAWL fonds (10-036), box 9, file 19, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[3] Obituary for Shirley Elizabeth Greenberg, The Ottawa Citizen, 28 May 2022, https://ottawacitizen.remembering.ca/obituary/shirley-greenberg-1085317334
[4] Kaye, Lynn, “Introduction,” Women and Work Conference Program. Winnipeg, MB, January 30-February 2, 1975, box 9, file 12, NAWL fonds (10-036), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[5] National Association of Women and the Law, Women and Property Conference Program. Calgary, AB, 1979, box 2, file 4, NAWL fonds (10-036), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[6] “Co-opting Canadian women with conferences? Why not?” The Manitoban, 3 February 1975, box 2, file 2, NAWL fonds (10-036), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[7] Platiel, Rudy. “Two Windsor legal secretaries launch profession’s first strike,” The Globe and Mail, 20 September 1974, box 68, file 24, CWMA Collection (10-001), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[8] Baskerville, Claudia. “Laws ’with teeth’ goal of women,” The Ottawa Journal, 29 September 1975, box 1, file 9, Shirley E. Greenberg fonds (10-185), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[9] Greenberg, Shirley. “Why Does Sex Discrimination Persist?” NAWL Booklet, 1975, NAWL fonds (10-036), box 1, file 2, Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[10] National Association of Women and the Law. Presentation to the Joint Committee on the Constitution, December 1980, box 1, file 20, NAWL fonds (10-036), Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
[11] The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Jim Egan,” https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jim-egan