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Women Helping Women

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It is always gratifying to see women helping women; it is intensely so when the Consort of our Queen’s representative, the first lady of our land, gathers the helpful women of all nationalities, creeds and societies together, and by uniting them in one Council enables them to work for the furtherance and uplifting, not only for womanhood, but all of humanity; inspiring them all with a greater love of home, a greater love of country, a greater desire to be helpful to others springing from the inspiration of the Fatherhood of God and the Golden Rule which this Council takes as its motto.

On the 8th of November 1894 Maria Grant enthusiastically introduced Lady Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks Aberdeen and her new National Canadian Council …show more content…

Even contemporaries of the time acknowledged that fact along with their belief of ethnic and racial superiority. Look at Grant’s comment, and Lady Aberdeen’s affirmation of it, that one of the main purposes of the Council was to ‘unite women of all nationalities, creeds and societies together’. Historians have laid claim to the rest of the Council’s beliefs but this claim has been neatly ignored thus what has been written traditionally does not always convey the truth. Various ethnic groups existed in Victoria during the last half of the nineteenth century and they did not live in a vacuum outside the social and political battles surrounding them. Ethnic women had a say and were involved with the movement of women for social betterment within their cultures as well as within society in general. It would be absurd to think otherwise and the traditional narrative of the women’s movement remains incomplete without their parts of the story. A more complete narrative includes the stories of the historical ‘other’, the ethnic minorities, particularly Aboriginal, Black, or Asian people, who participated within the women’s movement of Victoria juxtaposed beside White involvement.
Any discussion of ethnicity as seen from a late nineteenth century perspective must include a discussion of racism. The catch is knowing what each of the terms means in respect to the topic under discussion. John Belshaw, Adele Perry,

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