1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«[W]e document in this article how young female clerical workers in urban Canada were distributed across different living arrangements corresponding to varying degrees of ‘independence’ vis-à-vis the parental home and other authority figures, and we trace how their living arrangements changed over time.» (p. 229)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
The authors use «the Canadian censuses of the period 1921–51 recently made available through the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure Project (CCRI) [and some] print media sources […].» (p. 229)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

«This study has confirmed that living in the parental home was, by far, the predominant living arrangement among single female office workers under 30 in interwar urban Canada – and even more so among French-Canadian Catholics than their Anglo-Protestant counterparts. Attention to parents’ occupations and housing tenure highlights the diversity of socioeconomic conditions of these ‘at-home-business-girls’. Nevertheless, our census-based analysis strongly suggests that the media figure of the carefree Modern Girl with few domestic obligations was less prevalent than the ‘breadwinning daughter’ who made a major contribution to helping the family survive economic shocks or accrue resources for upward mobility. Individualisation was thus a gradual process that could coexist with intergenerational interdependence: the breadwinning daughters who wrote to the women’s columns demanded recognition and respect from their more privileged peers as well as from the ‘experts’; and the office workers who lived at home with parents in comfortable circumstances may have enjoyed a growing measure of personal autonomy despite their living arrangement. We have shown that boarding, lodging, and rooming arrangements remained the main option for ‘business girls’ seeking or needing greater residential independence, largely in private homes or small establishments as opposed to commercial ones. […] Moreover, their presence within this small segment of high female residential independence was not negligible because they had reasonable earnings and were not obliged to live in residence, as many nurses and teachers were.» (p. 242-243)