"It's Up to You": Women at UBC in the Early Years

James G. Snell is a professor of History at the University of Guelph,
author of In the Shadow of the Law: Divorce in Canada, 1900-1939, and
co-author of The Supreme Court of Canada: History of the Institution.

This is a fine study of women’s attempts to break through the systemic
sexual discrimination at Canadian universities in the first half of the
twentieth century, using the University of British Columbia as a case
study.

With considerable sensitivity, the author examines the environment
within which UBC was founded and the early structural decisions made
regarding the place of women in that institution. Although students of
nursing and later of home economics were accepted at the campus, there
was a strong tendency to treat young women substantially differently
from their male counterparts. Though the rhetoric of equality was often
used, separate programs, institutions, and officials were established
and maintained for female students.

Nevertheless, young women persisted in finding the university
environment attractive and in influencing change in the direction of the
needs of the young women involved.