What was the role of women in Quebec society before WWII?
I have no specific knowledge of Canada, but I would imagine that Canadian women would have lived fairly similar lives to women in the USA and the UK. That is, most single women worked for a living, but most would expect to give up work when they married, unless they were very poor and had no choice but to go on working. Women who were serious about following careers generally stayed single, ‘juggling’ was not considered a desirable option in those days. In the 1930s, my mother and her sister were telephonists. my mother’s best friend was a shop assistant (sales clerk) in a large London department store. She had another friend who was a nurse, another who was a secretary, and a cousin who was a teacher. These were all typical jobs done by women before WW2. My father’s sister was a model, a rather more glamorous job than most young women would have had, but a job nonetheless. Married women expected, on the whole, to stay at home and raise their children. Anyone who could afford it woud k
