Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax James Struthers Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax. Edited by Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. 318, illus. $35.00 During the past fifteen years the significance of gender to the making of social policy has emerged as the dominant theme in the historiography of the welfare state. This fine collection of essays exploring the role of women as activists, administrators, and targets of social initiatives at the local and provincial level in post–Second World War Nova Scotia makes a welcome addition to this literature. Given the national framework that still dominates much writing on the welfare state, the book's focus on the municipal context as a key gestation ground for women's agency is all the more valuable, as is the wealth of new insights it provides into the making and gendering of Nova Scotia's welfare state. In their introduction the editors underscore a central theme – the contradictions of maternalism as an ideology for advancing the careers and needs of women through social politics. 'While we, too, acknowledge the repressive moralism that is often part of maternalism, this ideal also contains a genuine concern for improving the lives of women and their children and a recognition of women's valuable unpaid reproductive work' (8). The book's ten essays explore this paradox in depth through discussions that highlight women's social activism, the role of the state, the importance of secularization, the influence of the Cold War, and the particularities of Halifax and Nova Scotia as a setting for welfare politics between 1945 and the mid-1970s. Judith Fingard's lead article on the significance of women's voluntary organizations in Halifax is a model for how similar case studies exploring [End Page 334] women's activism at the local level might be undertaken in other Canadian cities. As she points out, "Given the time and effort that women's organizations devoted to progressive projects and programs … it is startling that they receive so little credit from politicians, the public, or historians' (36). In two contributions focusing more on the provincial than the local level Janet Guildford examines the transformation of public assistance in Nova Scotia between 1945 and the creation of the Canada Assistance Plan in 1966, and the 'fragile independence' of Nova Scotia's Advisory Council on the Status of Women from the 1970s to the present. Both essays provide important windows into the particularities of Nova Scotia's provincial welfare state, which invite comparisons with other jurisdictions. The ambiguous role of Fred McKinnon, the province's longstanding deputy minister of public welfare, weaves intriguingly throughout many of the book's essays. Portrayed in a progressive light by Guildford in her study of the end of the poor law and by Shirley Tillotson's fascinating exploration of the tortuous politics of reforming Halifax's Children's Aid Society, McKinnon is revealed in essays by Jeanne Fay on single mothers and Suzanne Morton on the struggle for day care as a paternalistic bureaucrat who had little tolerance for women activists. Another essay by Morton on Halifax maternity homes highlights the significant differences between Protestant and Catholic approaches to aiding unwed mothers, a comparison that underscores the far less judgmental and more comprehensive efforts of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul through their Home of the Guardian Angel. Wanda Thomas Bernard and Judith Fingard insightfully examine the working lives and community contributions of black women domestic workers in Halifax. Despite suffering the indignities and deep inequalities of a racialized labour market, these women were, through urban domestic work, also able to find 'goals and inspiration for improving their prospects, and more especially those of their children' (207). The rise and fall of the St John Ambulance home nursing program in Nova Scotia is explored in a contribution by Frances Gregor. Frances Early analyses the pioneering role of Halifax's Voice of Women in the 1960s for both the peace movement and the arrival of second wave feminism. The book also includes twenty-four pages of...