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

By 1919 the Women's Institutes (wi) was an immensely popular women's organization committed to the betterment of rural Ontario. Under the sponsorship of the Ontario Department of Agriculture, it initiated countless fundraising, lobbying, and social reform projects to elevate the standard of rural life, particularly for women and children. Margaret C. Kechnie argues in her book, Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919, that sources profiling the wi have served to perpetuate a variety of myths about the organization's early years. Kechnie seeks to debunk these myths by revealing the true motivation of its leadership, particularly in the context of the Country Life movement and changes in agriculture and the role of women. In doing so, she demonstrates that the mandate of the wi leadership and the concerns of Ontario farm women routinely diverged. Given the many works by and about the wi that romanticize the organization, Kechnie's unsentimental treatment is a welcome contribution. Indeed, although her main arguments run contrary to those in my book about the wi, I found them compelling and wonderfully provocative. Her revisionist approach, however, has weaknesses: some of the myths that Kechnie seeks to correct are not especially significant, and she is often unclear about who promoted them and why. As well, she seems so consumed with debunking myths that some important points get lost.

Kechnie seeks to challenge several crucial myths about the wi. She argues that the group was neither grassroots nor agricultural. It was funded and supervised by the Ontario government, whose male representatives dictated programs and policy, and was led not by farm women but by small-town, educated, and affluent women who were not especially interested in issues of the farm. Kechnie also argues that wi members were little interested in the domestic science agenda of the wi, which was designed to elevate the nature and status of housework in order to keep women on the farm and in the home. She demonstrates that members were bored by household instruction and that farm women were reluctant to sacrifice their income-producing farm work. Kechnie also argues that the wi was not founded with the intention of improving the lot of rural women, but to help rejuvenate the languishing men's association, the Farmers' Institutes.

But Kechnie also makes much of other myths that are far less significant. She mentions several times, for example, that, contrary to wi folklore, domestic science crusader Adelaide Hoodless was not the true founder of the wi and had little to do with the group after she called for farm women to organize. But scholars of the wi are now fully aware of this point, and it hardly seems necessary for Kechnie to mention it more than once. Kechnie also underscores the fact that the wi was not as popular in the early years as commonly thought. Indeed, she shows that the organization was slow to take hold, and that it eventually grew in size not because of the enthusiasm of farm women but because of the strenuous organizing efforts of government representatives. It should not be surprising, however, that a fledgling organization like the wi would have exaggerated its membership numbers and that scholars working from its records have unwittingly done the same. Moreover, the hesitation of rural women to join the wi in its initial years is attributable to many factors that had little to do with the possible shortcomings of the group. Kechnie also explores the myth that the wi welcomed members from all class, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. But why should we be surprised that the wi was like most secular women's organizations of the period that generally favoured a white, Anglo-Protestant membership?

In addition, Kechnie often overlooks who created...