Changing Patterns: Women in Canada 2nd ed

Margaret Conrad is a history professor at Acadia University and editor
of Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia,
1759-1800.

This is the second edition of a collection of essays, originally
published in 1988, designed to be used as a text in women’s studies
programs in universities and colleges across Canada. Produced through a
rather time-consuming collective process, the first edition had greater
balance and coherence than is usually the case with multi-authored and
multidisciplinary texts. Its well-deserved success has warranted a
second edition that is in many ways better, not only because of
suggestions from reviewers and classroom users, but also because the
book now confronts more directly the issue of difference among women in
Canada society.

In the first edition all of the authors were women who were either
trained and/or taught in south-central Ontario. The same is largely true
of the second edition, but there are some additions to content that will
make this edition a more useful resource in sites outside of the urban
Canadian heartland. Three new chapters address the condition of First
Nations women since 1970, women and the media in Quebec, and women and
traditional culture. Other essays on such topics as feminist theory,
politics, psychology, law, family life, and assisted reproduction have
been revised to reflect the recent explosion of knowledge in most areas
related to the study of women. The book has taken on more of the
apparatus of a text, with the addition of an index, suggestions for
further readings, and notes at the end of each chapter rather than at
the end of the book. While some essays are inevitably easier to read
than others, this is a highly accessible starting place for both the
student and the general reader interested in the changing patterns of
women’s lives in Canada.