Agora: Red Deer Polytechnic Undergraduate Journal
Volume 16:2 (2025) Student Writer Awards

Constructing the Canadian Woman:
Propaganda Portrayals of Women
During Suffrage Efforts and World
War I
Saija Clement

“Nice
don’t

want

women
the

vote.”

These were the words
spoken to activist Nellie
McClung,

and

several

groups of delegates in
1914 by Manitoba Premier
Sir
Figure 1.Montreal Dailv Star, Monday,
December 3, 1917. Ad put out by Union
government campaign urging women to vote
(VOTE written on gun) under the 1917 Wartime Elections Act.

Rodmond

Roblin. 1

Spoken

before

the

Legislative

Assembly

of

Manitoba,

these

reflected

the

words
common

Conservative, male sentiment towards women at the time. He

1

Gutkin, Harry, and Mildred Gutkin. 1996. "“Give us our due!” How Manitoba Women Won the
Vote." Manitoba History.

1

couched his statement with talk of women being “gentle,” that
women have more political power “around her dinner table than
she would have in the market place.” While Roblin went on to
boldly proclaim that he loved his mother and thought women
“superior,” one must take into account that words do not
necessarily reflect reality. What good were Roblin’s words of
flattery when women were only idolized as a singular, idealistic
trope? The real-world impact of the order he sought to uphold
negated each woman’s individual personhood, and her right to
choose whether she’d prefer to speak in the marketplace or
around the kitchen table. The underlying reality of the time was
that women were expected to know their place as second-class
citizens of Canada. Be “nice.” Don’t ruffle feathers, don’t cause
any trouble. We see many portrayals of the “nice”, or the male
ideal of “woman” in propaganda and political cartoons of the
time.
There is some irony to Rodmond’s idea that women were
not inherently predisposed to politics. Women’s voting rights in
Canada have a nuanced history. It has not always been the case
that women were barred from democratic participation. Prior to
European

settlement,

Indigenous

nations

such

as

the

Haudenosaunee had long-standing traditions in which women
not only held power but were held in the highest regard in their

2

positions as Clan Mothers. 2 The political systems that settlers
imported from Europe, on the other hand, lacked strong
traditions of women voting. While some settler-background
women connected to politically powerful men (such as Louis
Joseph Papineau’s mother) cast ballots in provincial elections
prior to Confederation, it was rare, and women had effectively
no say at the ballot box. 3 Thus, the normative ways imported to
the continent from England were the status quo at the time of
McClung and Roblin’s speeches on women’s suffrage.
The foil to the “Nice Woman” can be found in Canadian
writer Stephen Leacock’s “Awful Woman”: she is nonsensical,
shrewish, bespectacled, and worst of all, a suffragette. 4 These
images of suffragettes are propaganda, defined by Edward
Bernays as “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses.” 5 The
propagandistic use of fictitious narratives to manipulate public
opinion remains a potent tool in politics to this day. How did the
hyperbolized spinster images of suffragettes and their
pedestalized, submissive counterparts compare with the realities
of Canadian women at that point in time, and what propaganda

Mann, Barbara A. 2000. "Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas."
Surveyer, Édouard Fabre. 1927. "The first parliamentary elections in Lower Canada."
4
Leacock, Stephen. 1916. "The Woman Question." Essays and Literary Studies, p.137-160
5
Bernays, Edward. 1928. "Propaganda."
2
3

3

did suffragette women use to counter the narratives of the
idealized “nice woman” and Leacock’s “Awful Woman?”

Figure 2. Suffragette as portrayed in Stephen Leacock's "The Woman Question". 1916

The figure conjured in this text stands as the first line of
attack against women’s rights activists. Before we begin, it is
valuable to note that Leacock dealt in satire. There is some
debate as to how sincere Leacock was being with The Woman
Question. However, if satire it indeed is, unfortunately, it’s
subtle enough that the wildly unhinged narrative within the piece
ends up being well in line with anti-suffrage sentiments of the
day, and Leacock is still generally known as staunchly antifeminist. It is also worth pointing out that The Woman Question
can be found posted unironically on a myriad of modern-day

4

anti-woman websites, illustrating the precarious tightrope walk
of satire. So, satire or not, the caricature of the Awful Woman
was designed and is still deployed to sour the public against
women’s suffrage efforts. Variations of the Awful Woman can be
found portrayed in many of the anti-suffrage posters from
Britain and Canada during the time. Accompanying Leacock’s
article are some delightful illustrations by Charles William
Jeffries depicting the Awful Woman. (see fig. 2) Of the Awful
Woman, Leacock writes:
Then there rose up in our own time, or within call of it, a
deliverer. It was the Awful Woman with the Spectacles, and the
doctrine that she preached was Woman's Rights. She came as a
new thing, a hatchet in her hand, breaking glass. But in reality
she was no new thing at all, and had her lineal descent in history
from age to age. The Romans knew her as a sibyl and shuddered
at her. The Middle Ages called her a witch and burnt her. The
ancient law of England named her a scold and ducked her in a
pond. But the men of the modern age, living indoors and losing
something of their ruder fibre, grew afraid of her. The Awful
Woman --meddlesome, vociferous, intrusive--came into her
own. 6

6

Ibid.

5

The disdain is palpable. In the category of Awful Woman,
we tend to find 3 prominent sub-categories: The Crazy woman,
the Lazy woman, and the Ugly, Unmarried woman.
The Crazy Woman
In The Woman Question, Leacock opens with a stagesetting: he and a friend, at a café enjoying coffee, when a loud
suffragette at another table proclaims that giving women the vote
will induce a world in which these is “…no more poverty, no
disease, no germs, no cigarette smoking and nothing to drink but
water.” He couches this in snide mockery of his straw-feminist,
writing, “We were hoping that the Awful Woman would explain
how war would be ended. She didn't.” He later refers to women
in pursuit of their rights “delusional”. 7 By casting his ideological
opponent as overly idealistic, naïve to the workings of life, and
brimming with delusion, he can posit his position as rational.
The

narrative

set forth is this: women
who want votes are
hysterical; the woman
who strikes out beyond
the

confines

which

have been set for her is
unwell and cannot be
7

Figure 3. Clipping from the Winnpeg Tribute on Taft's "hysterical"
comments. 1915

Ibid.

6

taken seriously. This attempt to smear women as “hysterical”
was nothing new, but it was still echoed in retaliation to demands
for suffrage by politicians like United States president William
Howard Taft. While a US politician, his views and those of antisuffrage UK Premier Herbert Henry Asquith were printed in
Canadian papers, propagating the notion. 8
The Lazy Woman
Propaganda portraying the Lazy woman are a
particularly interesting case. These postcards tended to show
suffragettes lounging about while men do (ironically) the
housework women would normally do, or simply show men
being tired and resentful of taking on household chores. One
cannot ignore the blatant hypocrisy, especially in the posters

8

The Winnipeg Tribune. 1915. September 24: 4.

7

such

as

Dunstan

Weilen’s,

which

shows a man doing
laundry in a washtub
with the caption, “I
want to vote, but my
wife won’t let me.”
(Fig.)

without

a

single

hint

of

recognition

that

perhaps women, like
men, may also be
embittered

and

unsatisfied

with

being
Figure 4. Duncan Weilen anti-suffrage postcard. 1910-1915

disallowed

from a life beyond
washing and child-

rearing. The idea of the suffragette women as lounging around
while their men did laundry is fictitious to the point of deserving
ridicule. During WW1, women took up working in many of the
industries in which they had previously denied employment due
to their social status. Some went abroad during the war as nurses
and anesthesiologists. Some women even saw it as their duty to

8

practice military drills in the event of an invasion, such as the
Toronto Amazons, the women’s home defence front. 9
The Ugly, Unmarried Woman
Another common narrative in anti-suffrage propaganda
was of the scorned woman. A wealth of images portrays
suffragettes as women who were unloved by men. Leacock
writes

of

this

archetype,

“Thus

the

unmarried

woman,

a

quite

distinct thing from
the " old maid " of
ancient

times,

came

into

existence,

and

multiplied

and

increased till there
were millions of
her.” 10 There was
no shortage of this
narrative present in
anti-suffrage

9

Figure 5. Origins and development of a suffragette" 1910-1915

Ibid
Ibid.

10

9

propaganda of the time. The images and writings of this nature
claim that women’s desire for voting rights was tied to the lack
of a man in their lives but ignored the reality of the fact that
many women who sought the vote were, in fact, married. In fact,
there were men among the ranks of Canadian supporters of
women’s suffrage. Irene Parlby is but one example of a
suffragette whose engagement in politics through the United
Farmers Association of Alberta was supported by her husband
Walter. 11

Figure 6. "The Call" by Byam Shaw. If you sign up for the war, women will put
their hands all over you. The women in this case are the personification of
several Canadian provinces.
11
Soltice, Alexis Ann. 2005. "Dried Apples, Victorian Ideals, and Organizational Works: The
Private and Public Personae of Mary Irene Parlby."

10

The Nice Woman
If the “Awful Woman” exists, it follows that patriarchal
minds must create the antithesis of her. The “nice woman” is the
subservient, Christian homemaker. The beloved beautiful
woman and mother is trotted out not only to give men something
to fight for, as seen in Byam Shaw’s 1917 poster The Call, (see
Fig. 3) but also serves to sell women their own submission as
aspirational, deserving of praise from the patriarchal order.
We can perhaps find the prototype for the idealized Nice
Woman in the figure of
Columbia in John Gast’s
1872 painting American
Progress. While not a
Canadian painting, the
settlers of the land which
would become known as
Canada were no doubt
operating based on the
same principles as the
settlers

depicted

in

Gast’s work. Columbia is
Manifest Destiny embodied.
Suffice it to say,
Columbia

is

not

Figure 7. "No Votes Thank You" Harold
Bird. 1912

a

11

suffragette. She
is the white male
settler

wet

dream: nubile, as
virginal as the
plains these men
sought

to

conquer.

In

essence, she is

Figure 8. "American Progress" John Gast. 1872

the

“nice

woman” Roblin would prefer to the suffragettes. Columbia does
not want anything for herself. She seeks no power of her own.
She is a figure intended to rally men’s desire to lay claim to the
land as much as to women’s bodies. She is in every way a
fictious, perhaps even delusional, construction of the male
imagination, much akin to the settler delusion of an
“uninhabited” land ripe for the taking. The images of the ideal
Canadian woman are intended to reinforce the notion that
women’s usefulness to the national interest is through serving
men, and not in cultivating an awareness of the politics shaping
her place in society.
Unfortunately, some of the beliefs espoused by Roblin
about women were also held by women. One notable Canadian
anti-suffrage advocate, Adelaide Hoodless, who is known for

12

pioneering Home Economics as part of the school curriculum to
prepare young girls to become homemakers. While to some
degree, Hoodless’ belief in teaching these skills was influenced
by the outsourcing of inarguably useful production skills, such
as sewing, from the home to factory, there remained a strong
streak of gender essentialism to her reasoning. 12 A visual
conjuring of Hoodless’ view of women is seen in Figure, an
illustration by Harold Bird, on behalf of the National League
Opposing Women’s Suffrage. The League included women in
its’ ranks. The poster depicts a benevolent and beautiful
Columbia-esque figure holding the “No votes thank you.”
Banner, and juxtaposed by the flustered and unkempt feminist
behind her, holding her ‘Votes’ flag. One could argue that antisuffrage arguments and depictions set forth by women largely
operate on an internalization of the male-prescribed Nice
Woman.

Figure 9. Excerpt from The People's Forum of Winnipeg, 1915. "Program of speakers for the
1914-1915 season."

12
Crowley, Terry. 1986. "Madonnas before Magdalenes: Adelaide Hoodless and the Making of
the Canadian Gibson Girl."

13

In spite of the propaganda & falsehood deployed in the
effort to keep women out of the halls of politics, the first Federal
granting of voting rights to women (albeit only white women at
this point) came in 1918. Through their efforts, women who

advocated for suffrage were able to garner adequately wide
sympathy for their cause. culminating in the Person’s Case
granting women the right to vote Federally. Much of the
propaganda in favour of women’s suffrage maintained that
women were every bit as responsible, hard-working, and capable
as men, and therefore deserved a voice in the voting booth.
While 1918 marked the official year in which white
women were granted suffrage, it’s integral to keep in mind that
this was only the first small victory on the road to universal
suffrage for women. Women in Quebec were still prevented

14

from voting provincially until 1940, and it was not until 1999
that women in Nunavut secured the vote: a mere 26 years ago.
While we should not downplay the struggle that white
suffragettes won in 1918, it is crucial to recognize women’s
collaborative efforts to subvert propaganda & policy designed to
diminish our political agency is multi-faceted, steeped in the
complexities of racial and class stratification. Perhaps even more
importantly, it is crucial that no woman take for granted that our
right to exercise political autonomy will always be upheld by
those in power. The reality is that in today’s digital age, woman
are being faced with just as much, if not more propaganda aimed
at undermining our autonomy as political beings. Roblin’s Nice
Woman and Leacock’s Awful Woman are alive & well, having
been dressed up in 21st century clothes and posted all over
TikTok. We still see the two streams of propaganda aimed at
women today: the denigration of feminists and women who seek
political power as ugly and unfuckable, and the pedestalization
of “nice” women: the subservient maid, barefoot in the kitchen.
Women with agency still draw the ire of pathetic men who long
for dominance, exemplified in the memes circulated in maledominated male spaces - this being the newest wave of
propaganda used to portray independent women negatively.
Conversely, the recent rise in popularity of the “trad wife”
trope/lifestyle as a version of idealized womanhood being

15

pushed largely to the benefit of white men – however, it is white,
right-wing and mostly upper-class women who are the face of
its’ advertising, no doubt to spark men’s desire for women’s
subservience, and as means of falsely advertising to women a
romanticized escape from the difficult responsibilities of
surviving in the ruthless workforce of late capitalism.13 Of
course, the ideal crumbles easily: many of these women find
themselves penniless following divorces, unable to support
themselves. The deluge of modern anti-woman propaganda
should make it clear to us: Women must continue to fight for
ourselves, to organize across racial and class divides, and to
counter the new attempts to brainwash our sisters into
submission. To paraphrase an axiom from illustrious Canadian
feminist Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale: We
must not let the bastards grind us down. 14

13 Scaringi, Vanessa. 2024. "The False Escapism of Soft Girls and Trad Wives."
14

Atwood, Margaret. 1998. The Handmaid's Tale. National Geographic Books.

16

References
Atwood, Margaret. 1998. The Handmaid's Tale. National
Geographic Books.
Bernays, Edward. 1928. "Propaganda."
Bird, Harold. 1912. "No Votes Thank You."
https://modwomen.mla.hcommons.org/2018/04/09/snyd
er-teaching-votes-for-women-and-suffrage-propagandain-the-modernist-classroom/no-votes-thank-youpostcard-harold-bird-museum-of-london/.
Calgary Daily Herald. 1912. "Against Suffragettes." February
28: 22.
Crowley, Terry. 1986. "Madonnas before Magdalenes: Adelaide
Hoodless and the Making of the Canadian Gibson Girl."
Canadian Historical Review, ed.: 520–547.
doi:doi:10.3138/chr-067-04-03.
Gutkin, Harry, and Mildred Gutkin. 1996. "“Give us our due!”
How Manitoba Women Won the Vote." Manitoba
History.
https://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/32/womenwo
nthevote.shtml.
Leacock, Stephen. 1916. "The Woman Question." Essays and
Literary Studies, p.137-160.
https://archive.org/details/essaysliteraryst00leacrich.

17

Mann, Barbara A. 2000. "Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas."
Reyburn, Karen. 1998. "Blurring the Boundaries: Images of
Women in Canadian Propaganda of World War I."
University of Guelph.
https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/items/eed64f29-d46d4961-8542-fdcda6cd2c5f.
Scaringi, Vanessa. 2024. "The False Escapism of Soft Girls and
Trad Wives." TIME, February 28.
https://time.com/6835737/soft-girls-tradwives-mentalhealth-essay/.
Shaw, Byam. 1917. ""The Call," An Illustration for Canada in
Khaki." https://www.wikiart.org/en/byam-shaw/thecall.
Soltice, Alexis Ann. 2005. "Dried Apples, Victorian Ideals, and
Organizational Works: The Private and Public Personae
of Mary Irene Parlby." Doctoral thesis.
Street, Kori. 1991. ""Toronto's Amazons": militarised
femininity and gender construction in the Great War."
Thesis (M.A.) ed.
Surveyer, Édouard Fabre. 1927. "The first parliamentary
elections in Lower Canada."
https://archive.org/details/firstparliamenta0000surv/pag
e/4/mode/2up?view=theater.
The Winnipeg Tribune. 1915. September 24: 4.

18

Unknown. 1910-1915. "Origin and development of a
suffragette."
Winnipeg, The People's Forum of. 1915. "Program of
speakers for the 1914-1915 season." The People's Forum.
Accessed 2025. https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/canadianwest/052930/05293053_e.html.

19