Agnes Macphail, the first-ever female Canadian MP took to her feet in the Commons on this date in 1925 and called for reforms to the nation’s divorce laws. In doing so, she described for MPs the true reality of life in the home for Canadian women.
“It is a fact that all women contribute more to marriage than men; for the most part they have to change their place of living, their method of work, a great many women today changing their occupation entirely on marriage; and they must even change their name,” she said. “They then work continuously for many years until death happily releases them, and that without wages at all. They work without pay. No one can claim that a married woman is economically independent, for she is not; apart from some very rare exceptions, married women are dependent economically, and that is the last possible remaining bond on women.”
Macphail, who had been elected to the Commons in 1921, then made crystal clear what she and Canadian women had waited far too long for equal rights.
“When I hear men talk about woman being the angel of the home I always, mentally at least, shrug my shoulders in doubt,” she continued. “I do not want to be the angel of any home; I want for myself what I want for other women— absolute equality. After that is secured, then men and women can take turns at being angels. I stress that angel part, because I remember that last year an honourable member who spoke from the opposite benches called a woman an angel and in the next breath said that men were superior.”
Wise words.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.