Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919 (review)

Much of Canadian sociology focuses on urban matters, often, neglecting the rich history of rural women's activities. With her detailed account of the formation of the Federated Women's Institutes, one of the earliest rural women's groups in Ontario, Margaret Kechnie draws our attention to the life and times of farm and small-town women in the early 1900s. Using first-hand documents from meetings, speeches, annual reports and government sources, Kechnie traces the beginnings of the Women's Institutes (W.I.) at a meeting in Stoney Creek in 1897 to its eventual federation in 1919. One question anchors Kechnie's analysis: How is it possible that a group to which farmers were initially so antagonistic and openly scornful could achieve, thirty years later, widespread provincial influence? Her answer is succinct: rural Ontario women "stole" the W.I. from its originators, the Department of Agriculture, and reshaped it to meet their needs.

At the turn of the century, Ontario farmers faced many challenges: a crippling depression, depopulation of rural areas, and the application of industrial production methods to farming. The Ontario Department of Agriculture, in cooperation with its agent. The Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), initiated strategies to modernize farming including introducing productivity-enhancing technology, educating farmers on public health issues, and championing a domestic ideology of separate work spheres for men and women. The W.I., Kechnie shows, was an instrument created, funded and managed by the Ontario government in its attempt to professionalize farming and eradicate the "superstitious and stick-in-the-mud" ideas that the government felt characterized much of the thinking within the farm community.

Rather than continuing the myth that the W.I. enjoyed widespread grassroots support from its inception, Kechnie reveals the early attempts to organize the W.I. as a failure. Using firsthand materials to support her arguments, Kechnie provides an in-depth look at the early responses to government attempts to regulate the lives of rural women. The 1898 first annual report of the Stoney Creek branch, for example, shows many members bewildered by the aims and objectives of the group while others seemed indifferent and still others overtly hostile. Initially advertised as a "social" group for farm women, the W.I. had a vague name, an overtly patriotic motto of "For Home and Country", and am ambiguous mandate of promoting better living. It had little appeal to farm women struggling daily to eke out a living. It refused to acknowledge farm women's essential income-producing activities, refused to assist them in marketing their produce, and refused to help women cope with their dual roles as homemakers and income experts. Instead, in its early years, the W.I. produced volumes of irrelevant and impractical information. Rather than addressing structural problems that hindered modernization, such as the lack of affordable hydroelectric power, immunization, contagious diseases, emergency health care, and mishaps with farm animals, the W.I. avoided topics of crucial importance to farm women.

Although Kechnie does not label it as such, early, state-sponsored organizing by the W.I. represents a bold attempt at moral and social regulation. Take the example of Laura Rose, a single career woman, OAC instructor and dairy expert. In 1906, in an address to an annual W.I. meeting, Rose's speech entitled "The Womanly Sphere of Woman" articulates the ideology of domesticity. Men, using the latest technology, should carry out agricultural work traditionally done by women, including dairying. The increased profits would allow men to further modernize their operations. Applying time-saving techniques to home and farm would provide women with increased energy and time to enjoy leisure pursuits that would equip them spiritually and emotionally. A healthier and more contented farm population would result if both men and women embraced new ideals and new technology. In her 1911 texbook "Farm Dairying", Rose placed the problems associated with poor dairy problems squarely on the shoulders of the farm women...