Women’s contribution to Life Long Learning through Women’s Institutes
The role of women in the field of
lifelong learning is mostly unheralded. Of the many women’s groups that
developed over time, the Women’s Institutes have probably had the biggest
impact on the lives of rural women. Whether due to geography, economics, or lifestyle,
historically rural women have lacked the opportunities of their urban sisters.
Sexism played a role in supressing women, they could not expect anyone to give
them their rights, and they had to claim them.
One of those rural women was my grandmother,
Emma Hopkins Lewis. Born in 1888 and living until she was 89 years old, she saw
tremendous changes in society. From the horse and carriage to automobiles, she
lived through two world wars and the great depression. In 1920 she was one of
the founders of the Point Edward, Nova Scotia Chapter of the Women’s Institute.
The wife of a farmer and blacksmith and the mother of 4 children, she became a
driving force in the work of the Institute eventually becoming a Branch President.
She has little formal education but could read and write, no small feat
considering her gender and the period of history she lived as a rural women.
The meeting minutes record the level of
her involvement. She volunteered to organize fundraising events, providing a
meeting place in her home, and brought forward community issues of concern. She
brought forth a lot of motions, volunteered her home for meetings and chaired a
number of committees.
The primary concern of their fundraising
efforts was for the local school, but the scope of their charitable efforts
reached well beyond the boundaries of Point Edward or Edwardsville. They made
clothing for poor children, provided fruit baskets at Christmas, made underwear
and mittens for the Scotchtown Mission School, and raised money for the
Bairncroft orphanage.
Their monies were raised by the box
social. Cooking and selling dinners, dances, handiwork and grab bags of items
from their own homes. These women of humble means took some responsible for the
betterment of their communities. They also provided some education for
themselves by taking a correspondence course in dressmaking, and learning about
public health issues. They discussed the virtues of butter vs. margarine. They
also discussed serious public health menace tuberculosis (Women’s Institutes
Minutes, 1920-1923).
By reading 3 years of meeting minutes, I
was able to get a glimpse into the past, to a time before television,
electricity, indoor plumbing and social media. My grandmother never had a
bathroom in her house, had a water pump in her kitchen and cooked on a wood
stove. As a child this was an adventure, to her it may have provided hardships.
The hours caring for a family would have been much greater than today, pre
clothing dryer, dishwasher or microwave oven. Food preparation was a longer process,
there was to grocery store to take-out restaurant nearby. However, the fact
that these women found the time from their responsibilities to come together
for tea, conversation, crafts, fundraising and community projects is a
remarkable accomplishment.
The Nova Scotia Women’s Institute Act of
1914 provided the formal structure for the organization. The Minister of
Agriculture had the responsibility of supporting the week of the institute but
it seems to have been set up in an arm’s length fashion
The real credit for this organization and many
other group lies with a relatively unknown Canadian women. Ontario trailblazer,
Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, transformed a personal tragedy into an amazing body
of social justice work and adult education endeavours. Born in 1857, ten years
before Canadian Confederation, her range of accomplishments is astounding. The
impetus for her work was due to of the death of a child who drank unpasteurized
milk. Blaming herself for the fatality she set about to change in the lives of
other women.
She has been called one of the most
famous and obscure women in Canada. At a time when women were pushed to the
periphery of society, she demonstrated great vision and courage. She founded
the Women’s Institute and cofounded the Young Women’s Christian Association,
the National Council of Women, and the Victorian Order of Nurses. She also
developed Domestic Science curriculum for the province of Ontario. (Retrieved
from: http://www.adelaidehoodless.ca/) For a woman to have had such an impact
and yet be virtually unknown speaks more to the authors of our curriculum than
to her works.
In her book, Domestic Science, Adelaide
Hoodless sets out to educate women in a methodical way, about all of the things
they need to know to run an efficient household. She writes, “The aim of this
text –book is to assist pupils in acquiring knowledge of the fundamental
principles of correct living.” well as such concepts as neatness, promptness
and cleanliness. Her approach was what we would call today a multidisciplinary
approach. She felt giving them a sound basis in theory prepared them for the
“fine art of cookery.”(Hoodless, 1898). Pre Canadian’s Food Guide, her
chapter’s list categories such as macaroni, plain sauces and hot puddings.
(Hoodless, 1898). Probably in reference to her personal tragedy she has
chapters on caring for invalids and infants diets. It was a very scientific
approach to food preparation also at a time when it was difficult to
refrigerate food. Her work in the late 19th and early 20th century is even more
astounding considering her means of communication. Today such tragedies as the
loss of a child generate Facebook pages and Foundations. Her education efforts
through her various orgaizanitions could have saved thousands of lives, in the
area of infant mortality. Centuries ago even the medical community didn’t
understand that women and children were dying from, “bed pan fever” (cite) and
that tragedy was eliminated by washing hands before assisting in birth. I
believe she had the same impact on the women and children of her day.
The
writers of history text do a disservice to society by only recording the
accomplishment of white, Anglo Saxon protestant men. These events tend to focus
on battles and conquests. Lost are the stories of First nation’s people, women
and other marginalized groups. Group specific texts that aim to remedy this
situation can further marginalize themselves by being seen as an add on, not
part of the main stream common knowledge. We need more inclusive texts that
celebrate all of our accomplishment and tragedies.
This paper will focus on Women’s
Institutes and their impact on adult education. Their mission statement states
they aim to provide opportunities to enhance the quality of life, through
education and personal development. Their vision statement reads, “Learning,
sharing and improving the quality of life for all.” The fact they are still
viable organizations today speaks to the relevancy of this organization
(Retrieved from: http://www.gov.ns.ca/agri/wi/about/mission.shtml).
Sue
Jackson’s research on Women’s Institutes in Britain does not paint a
particularity flattering picture of the organization. Her study centred on
Denman College the residential college of the Women’s Institute. She found this
organization constructed the image of, “respectable femininity”, social class
and “Englishness”.
She
concluded that there is little evidence to suggest the learning at Denman
College challenges ideas of community or citizenship. Further, the active
citizenship they engage in is exclusionary.
She conceded the all-female environment
is a confidence builder for women and feels they are in a safe space. Denman
alluded to how women learn which helped develop a comfort level for its
participants. Some women formed friendships which helped them deconstruct the
stereotype of the older female learner (Jackson, 2006).
Jackson
come stop the conclusion that if women are not educated to participate in
public life than that education is of little value. Not all men are suited for
or interested in public life, neither are all women. The fact that the Women’s Institutes
focus on domestic issue and crafts, for my mind, does not devalue that type of learning.
The fact that women want to gain skills in an area of life where they hold the
greatest responsibilities make sense to me. It seems to be a male-centric view
that women’s issues are not as valuable as men.
In contract to Jackson’s
findings, University of York Professor Linda Perryton looked at citizenship
through women’s organizations such as the Women’s Institutes from 1930-1959.She
credits these types of groups with creating approaches that allowed women to
gain skills both in public management and informed them about public life. It
gave them a model that allowed them to reject the notion that women should be
consigned to the private sphere and that men owned the domain of the political
arena (Perriton, 2009).
Community
Education Co-ordinator Mart Hugh’s research concurs with Perriton’s finding on
the Women’s Institute in that she feels they did not widen their horizons. In
England, 1957 Women’s Institutes were dissolved. She discovered the purpose of
this organization was pre World war’s when society was preoccupied with the
health of children and morality. Such tragedies as high infant mortality rates
were blamed on individual mothers especially those working outside the home.
She accuses the London policy makers of
chauvinism due to their policies of providing education that would enhance
traditional women’s roles. If the Women’s Institute had been started after the
war, she feels the role may have been to educate women for citizenship. Both
World Wars gave women the opportunities to work in non-traditional roles
outside the home.
Curriculum at that time was developed
for domesticity. It kept women in their place in terms of gender and class. It
was not uncommon for girls as young as 10 to be released from school part time
to work. By today’s standards this is child labour but it was the norm for the
poor in the beginning of the 20th century.
After World War 11, it became the trend
for men and women to lead less segregated lives and spend more leisure time
together. This shift in ideology leads to the abolishment of single- sex education
for women (Hughes, 1992).
A
2013 newsletter from Brandon University talks about the virtues of the Women’s
Institutes but brand then as a “material feminist organization”. The author
sees the strengths of the orgaization in their charitable works. With one eye
firmly on the home and the other on the community, the rural women were able to
do remarkable things. Their charitable works in this study were found to be
hospital aid and comfort packages to soldiers. They also set up libraries,
assisted boys and girls clubs and placed sanitary napkin dispensers in a high school
(Reid, 2013).
Although the British researchers tended
to view the Women’s Institutes as organizations that perpetuated women’s
traditional roles and failed to prepare them for public life, I see the value
in their work. They were organized and managed by women. They set their own
agendas and controlled then type of learning they wanted to engage in. In a
time when women rarely peered outside of the kitchen door, it must have been a
breath of fresh air to get to gather and drink tea, make crafts, socialize and
plan community service projects. In my mind there is nothing whatsoever wrong
with that.
References
Hoodless, A. (1898). Domestic science.
The Copp, Clark Company. Toronto.
Hughes. (1992).London took the lead:
institutes for women. Studies in the Education of Adults,
2441-55.
Jackson, S. (2006).Jam, Jerusalem and
calendar girls: lifelong learning and the women’s institutes (WI), Studies in
the Education of Adults, v.38, no.1, Spring 2006.
Perriton, L. (2009). The education of
women for citizenship: the national federation of women’s institutes and the British federation of
business and professional women 1930-1959, Gender
and Education.v.21, no.1.81-95.
Reid, M. (2013). Women’s institute fonds
at the S.J. McKee archives.Monitoba Historical Society.
Spring/Summer 2013.no.72
Who is Adelaide Hoodless?, retrieved
from: http://www.greyroots.com/exhibitions/virtual- exhibits/tweedsmuirs/who-is-adelaide-hunter-hoodless/
Women’s Institutes Act. (1989).
Retrieved from: http://nslegislature.ca/legc/statutes/womens.htm
Woman’s Institutes of Nova Scotia,
retrieved from: http://www.gov.ns.ca/agri/wi/projects/
Women’s Institute, Point Edward, Nova
Scotia. (1921-1923).
