"Just Plain Everyday Housekeeping on a Grand Scale": Feminists, Family Courts, and the Welfare State in British Columbia, 1928-1945 (From Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History, P 379-404, 1995, Louis A Knafla and Susan W S Binnie, eds. -- See NCJ-166852)

• NCJ Number: 166865
• Author(s): D E Chunn
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 26 pages
• Sale Source: University of Toronto Press
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

This paper examines how feminists helped consolidate the socio-legal foundations of a gendered welfare state in British Columbia (Canada) and Canada during the post-suffrage era from 1917 to 1945, with attention to family courts.

Abstract

There, as in other jurisdictions, feminist women played a major role in promoting the development of social work and, to a lesser extent, eugenics among the poor. A core concern with the well-being of women and children and the family in general generated a consensus among feminists and between feminists and non-feminists on welfare issues that often cut across political and religious lines. This gender collaboration was particularly visible in British Columbia during the post-suffrage era because the Province boasted an unusual number of women in public life. Feminists were key players in campaigns to obtain both legislation that embodied the hegemonic conception of femininity and masculinity associated with the nuclear family and heterosexual marriage and specialized mechanisms to administer these social laws, such as administrative boards and socialized courts. This paper focuses on the latter development, with reference to family courts. It presents a preliminary analysis of why and how feminist women with loyalties and affiliations to three political parties -- Liberal, Conservative, and the social democratic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation -- supported and worked for the establishment of family courts in British Columbia, particularly during the period from 1928 to the opening of the Vancouver Family Court in 1945. The first section of the paper documents the shared assumptions and beliefs that were reflected in their collective view of the domestic relations court as a technocratic innovation for enforcing the "white life for two" among marginal families. The second part traces their formal and informal political efforts to mobilize others, especially other women, on this issue. The final part of the paper assesses the relative importance of gender, race, and class in explaining the female consensus on the need for family court that cut across political differences among women. 83 notes