J oan S angster . One Hundred Years of Struggle

One Hundred Years of Struggle: The History of Women and the Vote in Canada is the first in what will be a series of seven books examining women’s struggles and victories in pursuit of political equality in Canada. It is an excellent introduction to the series. Joan Sangster has the difficult task of providing an overview of the diversity of suffragists’ goals, strategies, victories, and setbacks as they varied over time, place, and the social location of those seeking the franchise; the remainder of the series will offer greater detail about the regions of the country and explore particular challenges faced by Indigenous women. Sangster begins by positioning herself as a feminist who acknowledges “the vote’s importance as a symbol of equality and full citizenship,” but who also recognizes the vote “has not produced a truly equal society—far from it” (4). The history of the vote “reveals the deep fissures of inequality that transverse our society, their immense resilience, and why some groups clung [and cling] adamantly to the status quo in gender relations” (5). Perhaps not surprisingly in this context, this book is both long overdue and goes beyond the dated studies of suffrage reflected in popular culture. Despite the publication date of 2018, this book is not a celebration of the centennial of the federal franchise but a study in diversity of thought and action, inclusions and exclusions, from which we have much to learn.

Centennial · Citizenship · Context (archaeology) · Diversity (politics) · Entitlement (fair division) · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Suffrage · Symbol (formal) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies