In colonial period of Canadian history, Indigenous women's roles were often challenged by Christian missionaries, and their marriages to European fur traders often brought their communities into greater contact with the outside world.

[5] As farm wives with very good nutrition and high birth rates, they played a major role in establishing family life and enabling rapid demographic growth.

This was due to the natural abundance of meat, fish, and pure water; the good food conservation conditions during the winter; and an adequate wheat supply in most years.

[9] In the next three centuries, women opened dozens of independent religious orders, funded in part by dowries provided by the parents of young nuns.

[12] Research has often been interdisciplinary, using insights from feminist theory, literature, anthropology, and sociology to study gender relations, socialization, reproduction, sexuality, and unpaid work.

This new code contains the current family law of Quebec, and it is based on gender equality: article 392 reads: "The spouses have the same rights and obligations in marriage.

It has been argued that one of the explanations for the current high rates of cohabitation in Quebec is that the traditionally strong social control of the church and the Catholic doctrine over people's private relations and sexual morality, resulting in conservative marriage legislation and resistance to legal change, has led the population to rebel against traditional and conservative social values and avoid marriage altogether.

Instead of austere functionality, they enlivened their living spaces with plush furniture, deep carpets, handmade fancy-work, hanging plants, bookcases, inexpensive paintings, and decorations.

Bessie Hall from Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia trained as a navigator and took command of a fever-ridden ship in the 1870s, but she left the sea, as women were not permitted to be officers.

Molly Kool of Alma, New Brunswick, broke the professional barriers against women at sea in 1938, when she became the first woman in the western world to win her captain's licence.

Indeed, most human rights activists did not raise the issue before the 1970s, because they were family-oriented and subscribed to the deeply embedded ideology of the family wage, whereby the husband should be paid enough so the wife could be a full-time housewife.

After lobbying by women, labor unions, and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the Conservative government passed the Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act in 1951.

Provincial officials interpreted the equal pay act quite narrowly and were significantly more diligent in tackling racist and religious employment discrimination.

Men were primarily responsible for breaking the land; planting and harvesting; building the house; buying, operating, and repairing machinery; and handling finances.

They prepared bannock, beans, and bacon; mended clothes; raised children; cleaned; tended the garden; sold eggs and butter; helped at harvest time; and nursed everyone back to health.

However, some were employed, chiefly as domestic laborers, unskilled workers, prostitutes, nuns (in Catholic areas), and teachers; a few were governesses, washerwomen, midwives, dressmakers, or innkeepers.

[36] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women made inroads into various professions, including teaching, journalism, social work, and public health.

[37] These advances included the establishment of a Women’s Medical College in Toronto (and in Kingston, Ontario) in 1883, attributed in part to the persistence of Emily Stowe, the first female doctor to practise in Canada.

The mission was governed by a volunteer board of women directors and began by raising money for its first year of service through charitable donations and payments from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Irene Parlby, the UFWA's first president, lobbied for the establishment of a provincial Department of Public Health, government-provided hospitals and doctors, and passage of a law to permit nurses to qualify as registered midwives.

Founded in 1919 to meet maternal and emergency medical needs by the United Farm Women (UFWA), the Nursing Service treated prairie settlers living in primitive areas lacking doctors and hospitals.

Nurses provided prenatal care, worked as midwives, performed minor surgery, conducted medical inspections of schoolchildren, and sponsored immunization programs.

The post-Second World War discovery of large oil and gas reserves resulted in economic prosperity and the expansion of local medical services.

They were often close to the front lines, and the military doctors – mostly men – delegated significant responsibility to the nurses because of the high level of casualties, the shortages of physicians, and the extreme working conditions.

English-speaking Canadian writers became popular, especially Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers.

Although initially successful in convincing the Ontario Department of Education to adopt scientific temperance as part of the curriculum, teachers opposed the plan and refused to implement it.

Among the many jobs carried out by WD personnel, they became clerks, drivers, fabric workers, hairdressers, hospital assistants, instrument mechanics, parachute riggers, photographers, air photo interpreters, intelligence officers, instructors, weather observers, pharmacists, wireless operators, and Service Police.

New problems emerged for sportswomen trying to achieve equal status with sportsmen: raising money, attracting popular audiences, and winning sponsors.

Franca Iacovetta reported in 2007: Although the most prestigious awards and endowed chairs still go mostly to men, and men still outnumber women at the full professor rank, the greater influence of feminist historians within the wider profession is evident in their increased presence as journal and book series editors, the many scholarly prizes, the strong presence of women's and gender history on conference programs, and the growing number of their students who are in full-time positions.

[96] A bandstand in Veterans Memorial Park in Langford, British Columbia, was dedicated in 2001 to all Canadian Women Mariners who served their country in wartime.