Education
By Liz Briemberg
Wow! On looking back most of the work and inspiration of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus was to educate, and in every way possible. Our overall goal was to raise the consciousness of all women to the overwhelming number of ways in which women and girls were led to believe they were inferior beings and then to organize to achieve radical change of this situation.
On reviewing issues of The Pedestal between 1969 and 1975, the educational aspects of our work are evident on nearly every page – information and discussion about work conditions, childcare, women in history, women’s sexual agency, women’s bodies, the denial to women of political and any other leadership roles, women’s cultural designation in art and literature, and on and on. It was as much an education of ourselves as well as others. Few of us had spoken in public before. We knew in our guts or by experience many of the issues but we had not had to articulate our thoughts on these issues and certainly we had not been involved in a newspaper production. The learning curve for us all was very steep.
The publication of our newspaper The Pedestal; the annual International Women’s Day demonstrations; the numerous workshops on any number of topics and our outreach to women in other communities, all were educational for us as well as for the readers and listeners. The Pedestal’s very first issue contained an article entitled “Women Against Myth in the Education System,” including sections on “Women as Teachers” and as “High School Students.”
Our annual IWD demonstrations took our ideas to the general public and were educational for those involved in the organizing, public speaking and, at times, street theatre.
Our workshops addressed many issues – women’s rights in the workplace; the organizing of a union; obtaining union certification; first contracts; child daycare issues; women’s legal rights; high school organizing; abortion rights and sexuality issues; and the Quebec separatist issues. There was also a theatre group and a video workshop that met at various times.
We held courses in libraries, schools, community centres as well as at the two universities and colleges – one example, was entitled “Feminine Mystique or Real Oppression” and another was “The Education of Women – how we learn to be inferior.”
In May 1969, a discussion paper was written by two members of the Caucus entitled “Education as a Priority”. The writers proposed the necessity of organizing within the BC Teachers’ Federation to encourage teachers within school classrooms to foster a critical attitude towards the traditional view of women’s roles and press for curriculum changes. By 1971 such an organization came into existence called Women in Teaching, in which one of our members was active for many years.
In Spring 1971, as part of increasing our awareness of women’s situation internationally, we helped the ‘Voice of Women’s organization hold a conference at which four Indo-Chinese women guests spoke to us and our US guests about the impact of the ongoing Vietnam war upon their people and their countries to inform us about the war situation and encourage women in North America to press for a Peace agreement and end of the war.
From this short account it is clearly apparent that much learning and education of ourselves and others was needed. So many of the topics had been dismissed or hidden behind a shroud of patriarchal condescension – such ideas, concerns and humiliations were not worthy to be given attention. As it turned out the more we educated ourselves and others, the more we acted on what we had learned, the more we realized how important these issues were and the importance of both studying them and implementing the changes to which they directed us.
Women’s Courses at SFU
In the Fall 1969, when the PSA Department was out on strike, some of its students, faculty and staff organized with Women’s Caucus to offer what they called a counter-courses as part of PSA Strike Activity. Instead of closing down the university behind a picket line, the department tried to open and expand education to those normally excluded.
One course was on the situation of women in society organized for students, working women and housewives. It was offered off-campus two evenings a week at the Labour Temple. PSA secretary Doreen Boal also organized with other women who worked on campus another counter-course, focusing on specific problems of working women, problems that were related to role of women in family, limited educational opportunities for women, and the way women see themselves in terms of what society considered “natural roles for women.” Called Women as an Oppressed Group, the course was offered once-a-week over six weeks. The Women’s Caucus’s November newsletter reported that attendance ranged from 25 to 60 people.
SFU’s first for-credit Women’s Studies course was offered in Fall 1971. Called the Geography-of-Gender, it was a 4th year seminar course. Technically offered by Geography Department faculty member R.B. Horsfall, the academic content was largely provided by Professors Margaret Benston and Andrea Lebowitz. Because their academic appointments were in Chemistry and English, the university didn’t consider them qualified to teach a credit course about women. Maggie, Andrea and PSA graduate students Pat (Hoffer) Davitt, Yette Lees and Wendy Eliot Hurst were listed as discussants for the course. Pat-Hoffers-classroom-notes.
Maggie Benston and Andrea Lebowitz went on to develop a proposal to establish a Women’s Studies Department. Andrea, who would become the first coordinator, appeared before the university Senate in the summer of 1975 to urge its acceptance. One senator dismissed the proponents as women who had commitment and enthusiasm “but no knowledge.” Another warned that to let these women teach Women’s Studies would be like allowing prisoners to teach prison education. Thanks to the skillful stickhandling of SFU’s first woman president Pauline Jewett, the Women Studies program got approved.
Women’s Courses at UBC
In Fall 1971, a group of women at UBC organized a non-credit course entitled “The Canadian Woman: Our Story” held at the Student Union Building every Tuesday evening for ten weeks in each of the two semesters. Registration cost $2.00 and was open to the public. Several of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus more active members were involved in giving presentations and in facilitating the small group discussions which followed each presentation.
The following year, 1972, an interdisciplinary non-credit course was held at UBC called Women’s Studies and followed much of the same format.
UBC introduced its first for-credit, interdisciplinary Women’s Studies course in 1973 after much wrangling with the UBC Administration.
Women in Teaching at BC Teachers’ Federation
Maggie Benston helped organize Women In Teaching, the first feminist group in the BCTF that lobbied the BCTF Executive to support the status of women and girls in education. In this BCTF video, three feminist activists who were instrumental in beginnings and success of the BCTF Status of Women Program discuss this history.
Related Materials
SFU uses Caucus history to teach research
When SFU celebrated its 40th anniversary, SFU prepared a commemorative display poster to help students learn archival research: See Janiel Jolley protesting Miss Canadian University beauty contest; see founders of SFU’s women’s studies department – Andrea Lebowitz & Maggie Benston; enjoy original cartoon by My American Cousin film director Sandy Wilson.
