A Natural Resource Wasted

Story contributed by Margaret Metsala about high school in northwestern Ontario, circa 1971

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1971:  Highschool reinforced gender segregation. Girls were forced to wear skirts and dresses at all times and then told they could not take shop classes because they weren’t dressed properly. There were lots of stupid reasons handed out as to why we were not allowed equality with the boys. The reason depended on which teacher you were talking to. When asked, the teachers fumbled and looked away and tried desperately to think of something. How could they explain a system that simply was because that’s how it always was and always should be? How could any of us think to question it? What it came down to was, they didn’t have to explain. They had the right to decide who took which courses, and that’s all there was to it. They often chose not to dignify our question with a reply.

We discussed these things during Man in Society, a sociology class we took. Our textbook for the course was The Human Zoo. The classes included boys and girls and were intensely sexist. The inferiority of girls was based upon millions of years of evolution and our little group of high school girls did not have the tools to fight this. The men and boys again, very smugly armed with books and studies and anthropology on their side, affirmed their superior place in the world. All us girls could do was stick up our noses and walk away. Equality with men was something we knew instinctively, if nothing else, even if men didn’t get it, and even if men made us suffer because they did not believe it. Men’s power was something we did know about. Men had power. Women did not.

Ideas from women’s lib were infiltrating the high school and the powers that be aligned themselves against it. Long after other high schools began loosening their restrictions and rules covering the girls’ dress code and course admissions, our northern school successfully defended segregation for many more years.

The girls’ opportunity to make a statement came when a brand new course was going to be offered in Natural Resources Technology. The purpose of the programme was to prepare students for employment as technicians with the Department of Lands and Forests. All the students were very excited by this development. Our disappointment was palpable when we were informed that the class was for boys only. Girls would not be permitted.

We demanded answers. The answer finally settled upon was this. “This class is very popular and there is not enough room to accept all of the students who want to take it. Naturally, girls will not find employment in this field and will only be taking this course as a lark. Every space taken by a girl would rob a boy of the opportunity to have a career in natural resources”. We gagged on this response and resolved to fight for our rights.

The opportunity to fight came with the news that, for the first time, computers would be used to create students’ timetables. We guessed that the computers would not be likely to sort students based on gender and we applied for the forbidden course in droves, laughing all the while. We were giddy with delight at our plan and hoped it would work.

We were unprepared for the fallout. It was frightening. The school administration and teachers were spitting with fury. We fouled up the works and burdened them with untold hours of labour. Punishments of all sorts were threatened. They knew who we were; however, there were too many of us to punish so severely and we were let alone. Every single one of us was manually ejected from the class and given the timetable slot in a course more suitable for a girl. In the end, our only pleasure was in the fact that we did protest this injustice. Not one of us got into Natural Resources Technology.