Interview by Liliana Antonyshyn
In 1965, you became the first woman to teach political science at York University. Was it intimidating to join a male-dominated field? Can you describe what it was like to be in political science at the time?
Was I intimidated? No.
When I was an undergraduate at Cornell University, I was already in a male-dominated environment. Women were very much a minority there, with 4.5 male students for each co-ed. Then, in my third year, I decided to major in Government. The percentage of women was even lower. I was a debater, and both my opponents and my partner were men. In my senior year, my department set up a small honours programme in the major, for the first time – and again, there were hardly any women, only two of us as far as I can remember. This is when an older working woman advised us to avoid learning to type, so that we could not become secretaries.
In short, I found myself in a male-dominated environment from the very beginning of my university schooling. (I did have one section taught by a woman T.A., but all my other instructors were men). So, being in a male-dominated field when I started to teach at York wasn’t new.
After earning my PhD from Yale, I got married and worked at various sessional appointments at the universities where my husband, Pat, was employed. That included Indiana University, where he had his first continuing appointment, in the English Department. We eventually moved to Canada because York was ready to offer me a proper job – not a part-time position. When I went to talk to the Chairman of the department at Indiana University about regularizing my work there, he said: “Well, I don’t know. We’ve got one woman already.” (I did not make this up.) My husband told his departmental chair that he had a job offer from the University of Toronto. And that splendid man, who knew us both, asked if I had a regular academic position at Indiana. When told that I’d finally been offered a job—as Administrative Assistant—he stood up and shook Pat’s hand goodbye.
I heard afterwards that the committee that hired me at York had been very hesitant: “She has children, so she’s not going to publish anything.” Fortunately for me, somebody pointed out, “She completed her dissertation while she had two children, so she’ll probably do all right.” They then hired me entirely on references, without an interview. But they hired me for a thousand dollars a year less than my male counterparts, as I found out later when a formal survey comparing salaries was conducted. A recent feminist book had pointed out that women don’t bargain as much about salaries and benefits. And I realized that was true of me.
At York, the people in my own department were all very collegial. We were a small department—we went from only five to nine faculty members the year I started there. Sometimes my colleagues did treat me like a mascot. After all, I was one of the youngest of them. But overall, they were supportive. I remember, once I was getting a ride to work with a candidate for an academic appointment in our department. There were three of us in the car. The man in the backseat leaned over and said, “Isn’t it nice that you’ve got a woman in the department?” My colleague who was driving, very quickly answered, “Isn’t it nice that we have Naomi in the department?”
"Was I intimidated? No."
Naomi Black
Being among a small minority of women did not affect how I conducted myself at York. I was made to feel just as much a part of the faculty as any of the other professors; I was one faculty member among equals.
There were a few women teaching at the University in other departments. With some of them, I became involved in Women’s Studies. In fact, I was one of the people who started the formal program; it was an opportunity for me to teach about Women in Politics. As I moved into Women's Studies, some of my Political Science colleagues saw the field as less important or less serious than other areas of study. Most didn’t. Still, there were the odd snarky comments. One young colleague who was very politically active in his academic area—South Africa—felt that Women’s Studies was too amorphous. He asked me: “How do you work in an area where there is no shared goal?” Other colleagues dismissed the whole field of Women’s Studies: “There isn’t anything to study, is there?”
To counter some of these remarks, I volunteered to give a talk at one of the Political Science department’s biweekly meetings. I easily produced many examples of the importance of women in the study of politics. Beginning with the sex trade in Thailand and the role of the military in Canada, I was able to show that there was much that could be taught. And women themselves certainly had politics and a goal. Happily, other members of the department supported me, and I was able to continue in Women's Studies. Overall, my colleagues were supportive of Women’s Studies and my efforts to help establish the program. I did not feel that I had any serious trouble.
I did fairly often end up representing my minority, for when I had the position then called Advisor to the President on the Status of Women.
And there were times in the university, such as when I was Chair of Senate, which involved chairing the regular meetings of the heads of departments and programmes, when I did definitely feel that I was outnumbered. Those were the times where I would sit in a room during meetings and just count the (small) number of other women present. All of us women in academe did that! Still, overall, I felt quite confident. I suppose that I was used to being outnumbered.
You have participated in multiple associations for women, notably the Ontario Committee on the Status of Women (hereafter, OCSW or Ontario Committee). In your view, what is the importance of such associations for the women’s movement?
I think that such organizations matter a lot. But in some ways neither the OCSW nor NAC are typical of women’s organizations in Canada. They are relatively new, even though 1971 and 1972 sounds like long ago to today’s young women. There are many older, long-lived women’s groups still around and active. As a political scientist I was interested in their policy impact, so I even joined several. At one time I rose to Vice President for the Ontario branch of the Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, founded in 1930. You may recall that no fewer than forty-one existing women’s groups were summoned by Laura Sabia in 1970 to campaign for a Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Those women’s groups that came together in the 1970s were of various ages and goals. By 1972 NAC’s first brochure listed forty-eight women’s groups that the organization coordinated. And the OCSW was one of the youngest at that time.
Women’s historians tend to identify VOW (the anti-war Voice of Women for Peace) as the first of the second wave women’s groups. VOW was founded in 1960 and still has two active branches, in Halifax and Toronto. NAC and the formal part of OCSW faded away in about 1985. But small groups of survivors of the OCSW are still active about topics that are big today.
Volunteer women’s associations like the OCSW aim to develop influence and connections inside of government. There are various ways of doing this in order to bring about change. In one historic example, for many years the National Council of Women of Canada had guaranteed access to the federal cabinet every year, so they could make women’s voices heard regularly by senior members of the government. The OCSW and NAC never got to that level of formal institutional influence, but there are other, more informal ways to make your presence felt. Essentially, they were lobbying the government. And often very effectively.
"If somebody had asked me if I was a feminist, I would have said 'yes.' But it wouldn't have occurred to me to volunteer it! I was just doing the work, advocating for women."
Naomi Black
As time went on, we had some members of the OCSW who played a more direct role in politics and the various governments in Canada. Lynn McDonald and Aideen Nicholson were MPs and Lorna Marsden was very active in the federal Liberal party and as a senator. Both Lynn and Lorna were presidents of NAC. Chaviva Hosek was an influential MPP in Ontario. They played a major role in getting women’s concerns onto the agenda. So, our well-argued briefs, provincially at the OCSW and federally through NAC, became part of what governments considered.
Women’s associations are a good way to bring about incremental change. It's a useful way of having influence, even if it is not the revolution that some other women support. It is actually a combination of both outside demonstrations and inside influence, ultimately—but I believe that we had our main impact by helping to build connections among women and then striving to influence the government from within.
In your chapter in the book White Gloves Off: The Work of the Ontario Committee on the Status of Women, edited by Beth Atcheson and Lorna Marsden, you write that you didn't call yourself a feminist when you first joined the OCSW. How did your involvement in the OCSW eventually change your mind about calling yourself a feminist?
The work came first, and the label came afterwards, or sometimes not at all. For example, in studying and teaching Women’s Studies, one of my more important contributions was participating in writing Canadian Women: A History. We worked together as a collective. The book was first published in 1988 and then two subsequent editions took it to 2010 – more than twenty years of my life. I don’t recall it being identified as feminist, as of course it is.
At the same time as I was writing about women’s history, I was teaching it. My first Women’s Studies course, before we even thought of a program at York, was a freshman seminar. I knew almost nothing about Canadian women’s history at that time. But I had heard of the five Canadian women who’d battled to get women included as legal “persons” in the British North America Act.
So, I had the seminar students each choose one of the Famous Five and learn about her life. I was surprised by the extent to which we were still working on the same things, to establish women’s right to participate as full members in Canadian society. Then, in 1971, the OCSW was established in order to work for those parts of the RCSW that applied to Ontario (another batch of letters—RCSW, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women). Much of my involvement continued because of the people that I met there. OCSW is how I met Lorna Marsden. I learned both from listening to other women and from participating myself.
Once I became involved in these different groups, not too long after joining the OCSW, I realized that this was feminist work—and that therefore I was a feminist. Certainly, if by then somebody had asked me if I was a feminist, I would have said, 'yes.' But it wouldn’t have occurred to me to volunteer it! Simply, I was doing the work, advocating for women.
My message to young feminists: keep going!
Naomi Black
What advice would you give to young feminists today? What can young women do to make meaningful change. for women?
Do the work that still needs to be done. Take up the flag and carry it forward!
The whole bundle of identity issues that are very widely discussed today simply hadn’t emerged yet in the same way in my generation. Young feminists today must engage with these concerns. There are dangers to such approaches, of course, if taken up naively. There is a tendency to box different identities and separate them, but doing that can lead to failing to notice the connections and overlaps, particularly among women. And you must look at connections and overlaps among identities if you want to do meaningful work to support women. Our view in 1970s and 1980s was that no identities should be neglected, but neither should they be given more attention than the “woman” identity. I still believe that. That is why understanding intersectionality is important, so that women and their struggles can be seen and heard and not forgotten in struggles around various other identities.
Our view, as feminists at that time, was that there have been two sorts of people in almost every society. Historically, one sort of people— men—have been in command. They go out and fight, and another sort—women—have stayed at home and had babies. Consequently, women have been seen as inferior to those who fight. That’s a short summary of patriarchy! And then, one of the exciting things about my period of scholarship and activism—and you won’t believe we didn’t know this!—was that we learned that gender is socially created, not intrinsic. And therefore, gender is varied and changeable. This understanding was liberating for us.
Today we are in an opposite moment. Now there is a tendency to take identities and assign unchangeable characteristics: you’re an immigrant, you’ve transitioned, or whatever it may be. Then these attributes are taken to be immutable. We must recognize that differences related to gender are socially created and that they are different in different places and times. Some societies have three genders or more. Gender is fluid and it is socially invented. That is what is exciting.
There are now women in positions of influence. Whether they know it or not, most of those women of influence are feminists. So, my advice to young women?
Keep going, keep going!
Liliana Antonyshyn is an undergraduate student at Glendon College, York University, doing a dual degree in International Studies and Business Administration. She is currently completing the remainder of her degree in Lyon, France at Emlyon Business School. She is interested in human rights issues, especially women’s rights issues.