‘Give Me a Canadian’: Gender Identity and Training Hostels for British Domestics for Canada, 1927-30

摘要

In 1927, the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization agreed to support a joint British-Canadian training scheme for British female domestics bound for the dominion. Under the larger initiative called Empire Settlement, not only did the programme attract few trainees, but even fewer of the trained migrant women remained in domestic service once in Canada. In an effort to account for failure, the Canadian women promoting the scheme turned to blaming the British whom they saw as deficient in work ethic and domestic practices. This study shows that a policy meant to encourage cooperation among British and Canadian women had the unintended effect of accentuating cultural difference between these groups, and contributed to a clearer articulation of a feminised English-Canadian identity in the interwar years.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2010.523963