Union Maids: Organized Women Workers in Vancouver 1900-1915

Abstract

The history of women in the labour force is by and large a neglected area of study, especially with regard to trade unionism. For British Columbia in the early years of this century, while there are various accounts of men's union struggles, there does not exist at present any published secondary material on the union activity of women. This article will attempt to give a preliminary account of the organization of some women workers in Vancouver during the period from 1900 to 1915. Research on such a topic is full of problems. Women's organizing efforts are recorded in scattered fashion throughout old labour newspapers and minutes of meetings, but the records are fragmentary and often ambiguous. It is extremely rare to find accounts by the women themselves, so their motivations are often a matter of speculation. The failure of historians and trade unionists of the time to record women's activities has contributed to a present lack of knowledge of this area. The main chronicles of labour history in B.C. and Canada ignore the very existence of women workers, let alone their union activity. The earlier failure to record information probably stemmed from a belief that women's struggles were unimportant or insignificant in a historical context. The failure of later historians to retrieve what data exist seems to reflect this same belief. As a consequence of this ignorance of the role of women in the labour movement, various myths have arisen. One, of course, is that women have not attempted to organize in the past. Another, which was also prevalent in the earlier period, is that women are in fact unorganizable. This latter myth was in the past based simply on prejudice against women, but nowadays uses the erroneous historical myth as a rationale. The trade union movement has both shared in and propagated these assumptions. Then and now a male-dominated movement, it has a ten-