Women Who Woke Up the Law by Karin Wells

Women Who Woke Up the Law by Karin Wells provides an important historical overview of ten legal cases that advanced women’s rights in Canada. Many readers will be shocked to discover how slow the law was to change, and how dependent women were upon fathers and husbands in the not-so-distant past. With pinpoint accuracy, Wells identifies the societal barriers that first and second wave feminists came up against including a dearth of (sympathetic) female judges.

Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson had this to say in 1990:

I had the sense of being doomed to failure, not because of any excess of humility on my part or any desire to shirk the responsibility of the office, but because I knew from hard experience that the law does not work that way. Change in the law comes slowly and incrementally; that is its nature. It responds to changes in society; it seldom initiates them. And while I was prepared – and, indeed as a woman judge, anxious – to respond to these changes, I wondered to what extend I would be constrained in my attempts to do so by the nature of judicial office itself… The studies show overwhelming evidence that gender-based myths, biases, and stereotypes are deeply embedded in the attitudes of many male judges, as well as in the law itself.

This quotation highlights Wells’ careful observation that, for women, incremental change only took place after incredible sacrifice and advocacy and perseverance. Among the highlighted cases are the narratives outlining the prejudicial treatment of women with regard to voting, divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, custody of children, ownership of property, maternity benefits, abortion, racialized and sexual discrimination, and intersectionality.

The first chapter speaks to divorce and the then-prevailing sensibility that the nation should strive to preserve upright moral standards. In the 1880s, women and children in Canada (as elsewhere) were still considered the property of their husbands. And while a man could easily divorce his wife, with no obligation to support her once she had been cast out, he was invariably given full custody of any children. By contrast, a woman could only ask for a divorce if her husband could be proven to have committed adultery, in addition to acts of extreme cruelty (i.e., committing acts that jeopardized her life) or desertion.

In 1916 women were given voting rights. Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy and Alice Jamieson spearheaded this fight. Their next challenge was to have the courts recognize women as “persons” under the law. Prime Minister Robert Borden deferred to British common law, which stated that “women were eligible for pains and penalties, but not rights and privileges.” The group of women appealed to the Privy Council in Great Britain which ultimately ruled that “Canada’s constitution must be looked at within the context of a changing society.”

While these gains were made for white women, the law still did not consider women of colour or Indigenous women to be entitled to the same hard-won rights. As late as 1939, the Supreme Court ruled that business owners “could serve or exclude who they wanted on the grounds of freedom of commerce,” (leaving open the ability to refuse service to racialized people). As late as 1970, an Indigenous woman lost her status as an Indian if she married a non-status man, which did not change until 1985. It wasn’t until 2003 that the Ontario Humans Rights Tribunal declared that “the law must acknowledge that she is not a woman who happens to be (B)lack or a (B) person who happens to be female but a (B)lack woman.” The importance of intersectionality in this ruling meant that dignity and equality must finally be upheld by the courts for all individuals in all circumstances.

A woman’s right to choose was a prolonged battle played out in the media as well as in the courts. Dr. Henry Morgentaler was an early proponent of the Canadian abortion rights movement and his abortion clinics were at the centre of protests and controversy from the late 1960s until 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada removed abortion from the Criminal Code. Similarly, implied consent was another in a series of controversial changes to the law. It wasn’t until 1999 that the Supreme Court of Canada determined that “no means no.”

The courage and determination of many people are documented in this incredible history. Wells has amplified the voices of those brave individuals whose advocacy reshaped the narrative for women’s rights in Canada. This is a significant case history that belongs in every library.

Karin Wells grew up in BC and now lives in eastern Ontario. She is best known as a CBC radio documentary maker and is a three time recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalists documentary award. Her work has been heard on radio networks around the world and has been recognized by the United Nations. Wells worked – briefly – as a line worker in a pea factory, a school teacher, and an actor. She is also a lawyer and in 2011 was inducted into the University of Ottawa’s Common Law Honour Society.

Wells has documented the lives of influential (but often overlooked) Canadian women in her books: The Abortion Caravan: When women shut down government in the battle for the right to choose (finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and winner of the Ontario Historical Society’s Alison Prentice Award), More Than a Footnote: Canadian women you should know and her newest, Women Who Woke up the Law: Inside the cases that changed women’s rights in Canada.

Publisher: Second Story Press (March 4, 2025)
ISBN: 9781772604207

Lucy E. M. Black

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Lucy E.M. Black (she/her/hers) is the author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet, The Brickworks and Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth. A Quilting of Scars will be released October 2025. Her award-winning short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada. She is a dynamic workshop presenter, experienced interviewer and freelance writer. She lives with her partner in the small lakeside town of Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.

Lucy E. M. Black

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