A visible presence : the Victoria Business and Professional Women's Club, 1921-1960
Date
2001
Authors
Brocklehurst, Deidre Anne
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Abstract
This study of the Kumtuks, later known as the Victoria Business and Professional Women's Club, covers the years 1921 to 1960. The Kumtuks distinguished themselves from other women's organisations by limiting their membership to professionally employed women. The club's willingness to address issues that affected working women, however, evolved overtime. In the 1920s, the Kumtuks' commitment to voluntary service often overshadowed the club's broader mandate to address the problems facing working women. In the 1930s, the club cautiously defended the right of married women to paid work. By the 1940s and 1950s, the club would argue that access to employment, unemployment insurance, and to decent wages should not be circumscribed by gender, race, or marital status. The club's increasingly progressive demands for economic and political equality challenged an ideology of financial dependence placed on women by the state and by society in general.