Women have faced consistent discrimination at the hands of employers, as workers and as a sex.

Trade unionism has provided tools for resistance, but at the same time individual unions have discriminated against women. Women were out rightly excluded in some craft unions. Even industrial unions failed to consider the specific needs of women, although they included them in general union demands. It was not until the late 1950s that the International Woodworkers' of America (IWA) in British Columbia negotiated equal pay for women, despite earlier pressure from women members. At times male-dominated union supported women's demands for self-serving reasons. For instance, equal pay could protect men's jobs against competition from cheaper female labour and guarantee employment for men. When women woodworkers won pay equity, the forest companies stopped hiring women. This began a long and uphill battle by women for what was suddenly "non-traditional" employment in the wood industry.

History has shown that neither male workers nor their unions shared a uniform attitude towards working women. There has often been militant unity between the sexes when their interests coincided. When women have been able to join unions, they have done so enthusiastically; when excluded they explored other forms of job action or created their own workplace organizations. Community groups such as women's auxiliaries, originally created to support male unionists' demands, often expanded their jurisdiction, empowering women and moving them into action on other issues closer to home. Miners and forestry auxiliaries of the 1940s campaigned for health clinics, better schools, tuberculosis testing, against fascism and for many other issues in addition to supporting the union in contract demands.

CONSTRUCTING A CURRICULUM

Teaching women's labour history requires constructing a curriculum. There are at least two viable approaches to organizing course material. The instructor can provide a chronological overview of women's changing relationship to the labour force, family, working conditions and organization. Alternatively, she or he can organize the curriculum according to central issues. In either instance, themes will reemerge, offering testimony to the persistence of discrimination on one hand and the persistence of vision on women's part on the other.

Women have worked in all aspects of the food industry in British Columbia. Picking apples and other fruit crops, working in the fields of the Lower Mainland and in the food processing plants in both areas has demanded physical stamina from women. Farm workers and food processing workers have had an uphill battle in fighting for legislation. This women is in an apple orchard along the shores of Okanagan Lake, B.C., Summer 1944.

Photo by Nicolas Morant Courtesy of the Public Archives of Canada Pa - 116071