The mantra in the women's magazines of that era went something like this: when it comes to career options for women, the sky is the limit - quite literally, for aren't women flocking to flying school?  All barriers have been broken down. No career is too unusual or manly for a woman, although, it goes without saying most reasonable women aim to be housewives and homemakers.

The magazines and tabloids of the day  liked to include features about women in unusual jobs, like these ones about a woman blacksmith and a woman stockbroker.  I suspect these stories, at first glance feminist in tone, were really trying to defuse the suffrage movement. "See, women ALREADY have it all, why bother with the vote." Indeed, I've read a number of articles from the period stating this very thing. It's not a complete lie: There was one woman or two working in some capacity in just about every job category that existed.

With benefit of 100 years' hindsight and thanks to a few excellent resources online, I can paint you a truer picture about women and work at the turn of last century.  The Canadian Council of Women put out a comprehensive study of Canadian women and work in 1900, and it is available free online at Canadiana.org and the Montreal Council of Women supplied a brief to the Laurier's 1913 Royal Commission. Harvard's Online Collection about Working Women (1870-1930) features a great article on American women in the workforce (1910-1930) and Stats Can has some relevant charts in their Historical Statistics section.

In Canada, in 1910, many women worked, some because they wanted to and many more because they had to and many others, just like Marion and Edith, because they both wanted to and needed to. Marion, Edith and Flora became teachers because, in reality, there were not many occupations open to respectable women of the middle class.

In Canada,  more women worked in personal and recreational services (domestics?) with 99, 561 women working in that sector compared to just 38,753 men! Second came retail and wholesale with 50, 128 women employed in that sector, compared to 209, 731 men, which I assume includes textile factories.  Then came education professionals with women outnumbering men 34, 813 to 12, 666. Total workers in Canada numbered 2, 725, 148  with just 366, 629 being women. 10 women worked in the coal industry in 1911, 266 in the fishing industry, 1, 437 in the chemical industry, 1,199 in the railway industry. (D8-85: Statistics Canada chart for other areas)

Unhappily for Marion, Edith and Flo, Quebec teachers worked under poorer conditions and received lower pay than teachers in most other parts of Canada. (Marion's pay of $650.00 a year was excellent all considered.)  In the 1900 Canadian Council of Women Report, Carrie Derick, encapsulating the state of teaching at that time writes, "However, it must be said that the teaching profession is overcrowded, and the prospect cheerless. Teachers are overworked and underpaid and there is comparatively little hope of advancement for even the best trained and most talented Canadian woman teachers." Of course, the next decade would see an unprecedented influx of new Canadians and the profession would be begging for new (and better trained) teachers. When Flora graduated with a Model School diploma in 1912, she got a job right away in Montreal's Griffintown.

In the US, statistics show that there were more women working in 1910 than in 1930. That's because they counted farm wives as workers in 1910 but  not in 1930. (This issue still irks farm wives who work in the same sphere as their husbands but get no credit.) One profession that did go into serious decline over the period was dressmaking and millinery (hat making) with women taking on  more impersonal and dangerous and less creative jobs in the  textile industry. In 1912, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New Jersey caught fire, an occurrence with spurred the union movement. ALL THINGS ARE CONNECTED, and fashion is connected to women's happiness and well-being in more ways than the obvious one.

One job area that grew in leaps and bounds, between 1910 and 1930,  was stenography and secretarial. Edith, unable to get good pay as a teacher because she had no diploma, attended secretarial school and ended up working at McGill in the Registrar's office. She became friends with Carrie Derick, President of the Montreal Council of Women in 1912 and Canada's first female full professor!

For more articles consult the Tighsolas Women's Issues Index page:

Link to all Education 1910 articles on Tighsolas