The Work of Their Hands: Mennonite Women's Societies in Canada

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan,
and the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939-1970: A People Transformed.

Although Canadian Mennonite churches have traditionally been highly
patriarchal, the women’s societies operating within them have provided
women not only with opportunities for worship, fellowship, and study but
also with a means of publicly exercising their organizational and
leadership abilities. Fundraising activities, Bible study, and
fellowship were three important components of Mennonite women’s
societies.

Gloria Redekop’s study of these societies draws upon minute books,
correspondence, church periodicals, interviews, and data obtained
through surveys and questionnaires that were sent to women’s societies
in all churches of both the Conference of Mennonites in Canada and the
Canadian Brethren Conference. Copies of the research instruments are
appended, and the statistical findings are carefully compared and
interpreted in the context of the available archival and oral history
sources.

While declining participation is raising serious questions about the
future of Mennonite women’s societies, they were at one time a vital
part of most Canadian Mennonite churches. This balanced and sensitive
work fills a significant gap in Canadian Mennonite religious history.