Femmes / Action / Religion

In the history of women, Christianity plays an ambiguous role. God may no doubt speak to whom He pleases, in a manner which breaks apart the relationships of subordination. At the same time, the concept of divine sanction for existing authority relations, and the full panapoly of ecclesistical institutions, have historically provided a powerful justification for the maintenance of the status quo. Christinaity at a wide variety of places and times has supported subordinate roles for women

“The only girl in such a big class”: Women Students at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering during the 1920s and the 1930s

This article draws the collective profile and examines the experiences of the handful of women who formed the first generation of female students enrolled at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) during the 1920s and 1930s. The student records shed light on their socio-economic background, which they shared to a large extent with their male counterparts and the other women attending university at the time. The available sources also provide information on the school's curriculum and pedagogical practices, and on the main features of student life at FASE. The institution cultivated and transmitted a deeply masculine culture: to train an engineer was to train a man and to construct a specific type of masculinity, symbolized by the "Schoolmen" and the "School Spirit." How did the pioneers adapt to this environment? How did FASE respond to their arrival? The article accounts for the diversity of views and experiences of the female students, and for the different reactions to their presence. Nevertheless, the entry of this pioneering group at FASE openly raised the question: can a woman be a woman and an engineer? Other studies are needed to better understand how female students answered this question in their own way, in different schools of engineering and in different historical settings. This work will help bring answers to this other question, which is still widely debated: why so few women engineers?Cet article trace un portrait collectif, puis examine les expériences de la poignée de jeunes filles qui constituent la première génération d’étudiantes inscrites en génie à la Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) de la University of Toronto dans les années 1920 et 1930. Les dossiers étudiants jettent un éclairage sur leur profil socio-économique, qui s’aligne à la fois sur celui de leurs confrères masculins et sur celui des autres étudiantes qui fréquentent l’université à cette époque. Les sources disponibles nous renseignent aussi sur les programmes et les pratiques pédagogiques en vigueur, et sur la vie étudiante à la FASE. Il s’agit d’une institution qui cultive et transmet une culture profondément masculine : former un ingénieur, c’est aussi former un homme, et construire un certain type de la masculinité, incarné dans les « Schoolmen » et dans le « School Spirit ». Comment les pionnières s’intègrent-elles dans cet environnement? Comment la Faculté réagit-elle à leur arrivée? L’article fait part de la diversité des points de vue et des expériences des étudiantes, et des réactions différentes que suscite leur présence. Il reste que l’arrivée de cette première cohorte féminine pose explicitement la question : peut-on être une femme et un ingénieur? D’autres études sont nécessaires pour comprendre comment les étudiantes en génie ont apporté leurs propres réponses à cette question, dans des différentes écoles de génie et dans différents contextes historiques. Ces travaux apporteront des éléments importants de réponse à cette autre question, qui est toujours d’actualité : pourquoi y -a-t-il encore si peu d’ingénieures

"The Outlook for Old Age Is Not Hopeful" : The Struggle of Female Teachers over Pensions in Quebec 1880-1914

This article examines the struggle led by Quebec Protestant and Catholic women teachers' associations for a more just pension scheme from the late nineteenth century to the First World War. In Quebec, superannuation schemes for public school teachers dated back to the 1850s. In 1880, a compulsory, state-administered, pension plan for both male and female certified lay teachers was introduced. It discriminated seriously against women teachers, who constituted the majority of the lay teaching force; since the amount to be allocated was calculated on the basis of a teacher's average salary and total years of service, women teachers, who were paid considerably less than their male colleagues and also tended to have shorter careers, were to receive a much smaller pension. The present discussion explores the dynamics of the battles conducted by Quebec women teachers to eliminate these inequalities as well as the strategies and tactics they adopted to bring about change. It also sheds light on the importance of support received from other women's groups as well as on gender politics in teaching in turn-of-the-century Quebec. Cet article traite des luttes que les associations d’institutrices protestantes et catholiques du Québec ont menées de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale pour obtenir un régime de pension plus équitable. Les enseignants et enseignantes du système scolaire public bénéficiaient d’un tel régime depuis les années 1850. En 1880, un régime obligatoire fut instauré à l’intention des institutrices et instituteurs laïques brevetés exerçants dans les écoles primaires publiques, régime qui était nettement discriminatoire à l’endroit de la majorité du corps enseignant laïque, c’est-à-dire les femmes. Puisque le calcul de la pension se basait sur le salaire moyen et le nombre total des années de service, les institutrices, qui touchaient un salaire bien inférieur à celui de leurs collègues masculins et enseignaient généralement moins longtemps que ces derniers, recevaient à leur départ une somme dérisoire. L’analyse qui suit explore les stratégies et les tactiques que les institutrices utilisèrent pour rectifier la situation. Elle éclaire aussi les relations entre les associations d’institutrices et les autres associations féminines ainsi que les rapports qui prévalaient au sein du corps enseignant québécois au tournant du siècle entre les deux sexes

Urbanisation et éducation : La centralisation scolaire à Montréal au début du XXe siècle

Au tournant du siècle, Montréal est traversée, comme la plupart des grandes villes nord-américaines, par un mouvement réformiste dirigé par la bourgeoisie, dont l'un des principaux objectifs est d'introduire dans l'administration municipale un mode de gestion de type bureaucratique, tel qu'appliqué dans les grandes entreprises. ¡l s'agit, essentiellement, de soumettre le gouvernement municipal aux règles de l'économie, de l'efficacité et de la rationalité grâce à la centralisation des pouvoirs administratifs au sein d'un "bureau de contrôle", organisme non-partisan fonctionnant indépendam- ment du Conseil de Ville qui abrite la "machine politique" génératrice de corruption.Or les réformistes désirent aussi introduire ce mode de gestion dans le système éducatif. À Montréal, les promoteurs de la centralisation scolaire se confondent ainsi, dans une large mesure, avec les partisans de la réforme municipale, regroupés au sein du Comité des citoyens. En 1909, devant la Commission royale d'enquête sur les écoles catholiques de Montréal, ils revendiqueront la fusion de toutes les commissions sco- laires catholiques de la métropole, faisant valoir les nombreux avantages de cette réforme: uniformisation de la taxe scolaire, administration plus efficace et moins coûteuse, meilleure classification des écoles, établissement d'écoles supérieures accueillant les élèves ayant complété le cours primaire actuel. Les porte-parole du mouvement ouvrier réclament aussi la centralisation, mesure qui permettra, selon eux, d'établir l'uniformité des livres sur l'ensemble du territoire montréalais et de réduire, par le fait même, le coût des manuels scolaires. Les partisans de la centrali- sation se heurtent toutefois à Vopposition de l'ensemble du clergé, qui tient à conserver le cadre paroissial de la commission scolaire, au sein duquel il exerce une influence considérable.En 1916, le gouvernement libéral de Lomer Gouin vient trancher le débat en adoptant une loi qui donne largement satisfaction aux promoteurs de la centralisation tout en offrant des garanties au clergé montréalais. Celle-ci fusionne la Commission des Écoles catholiques de Montréal avec vingt-trois municipalités scolaires indépen- dantes. Elle confie Vadministration financière de la nouvelle commission scolaire à un bureau central de sept membres, alors que quatre commissions de district adminis- treront les écoles au point de vue pédagogique. Cette réforme aboutit à un nouveau partage des pouvoirs entre clercs et laïcs. La présidence des commissions de district est confiée aux premiers, tandis que les seconds se retrouvent majoritaires au bureau central. De plus, la présidence de la CECM reviendra, en 1919, à un partisan de la centralisation, le juge Eugène Lafontaine, ce qui témoigne de la montée du pouvoir laïc au sein du système scolaire public montréalais au début du XXe siècle.During the early years of the twentieth century, Montreal - like many cities all over North America - was seized by a reform movement directed by an activist middle-class group, one of whose objectives was to introduce business methods, such as those developed in the great businesses of the period, to the management of municipalities. Henceforth, municipalities were to be governed according to the principles of econo- my, efficiency and rationality. This entailed the setting up of boards of control, nonpartisan bodies operating independently from the city council which was thought to foster machine politics and corruption.Reformers also sought to introduce this style of management to educational admin- istration. In Montreal, the advocates of educational centralization allied themselves with supporters of municipal reform through the Citizens' Committee. In 1909, before the Royal Commission on the Catholic Schools of Montreal, they advocated the uni- fication of all the Catholic school boards in the city, citing the following advantages: uniformity in the tax rate, cheaper and more efficient administration of the educational system, better assessment of individual schools, and the encouragement of higher-level institutions for those students who had successfully completed the primary curriculum. Centralization also entailed a uniform course of study throughout the city, something which would lower textbook costs. The reformers faced intense opposition from the clergy, who sought to preserve local control of school boards, thereby protecting their considerable influence in school matters.In 1916 the Liberal government of Lomer Gouin settled this dispute by passing a law conceding centralization to the reformers while offering protective guarantees to the clergy. Twenty-three independent school boards were united into a single Catholic School Commission of Montreal. Financial administration was placed in the hands of a seven-member central office, while pedagogical matters were supervised by four district committees. This entailed a redistribution of powers between the clergy and the laity. Control of the district committees rested largely with the former, while financial administration was now largely in lay hands. Furthermore, the chairmanship of the centralized board was given in 1919 to a supporter of unification, Judge Eugène Lafontaine, an act which assured the dominance of lay over clerical control of the public school system in Montreal in the years after the First World War

The Writing of Women into Canadian Educational History in English Canada and Francophone Quebec, 1970 to 1995

The 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women of Canada represents the first official federal document to examine the situation of women in Canadian education through a feminist lens. It paid close attention to education, claiming that “whenever women are denied access to education, they cannot be said to have equality.” Feminist historians participated in this transformative movement in response to an increasing demand to make women visible; the new social history, which developed novel methodologies in its quest to recover the past from the bottom up, assisted them in their efforts to develop the field of women’s history across Canada. Our article examines the importance of feminist associations, publishing houses, journals, and awards in supporting the development of scholarship on women and education. We follow that overview with comments about the earliest scholars working in this field, concentrating first on those in English Canada and then moving to the history of the field in French Canada.RésuméLe Rapport de la Commission royale d’enquête sur la situation de la femme au Canada de 1970 constitue le premier document fédéral officiel à étudier la situation des femmes dans l’éducation canadienne dans une perspective féministe. Il a accordé une attention particulière à l’éducation, affirmant que lorsqu’« on refuse à une femme la possibilité de faire les mêmes études que l’homme, on ne peut dire qu’elle bénéficie de l’égalité ». Les historiennes et historiens, en majorité des chercheuses féministes, ont participé à ce mouvement de transformation en réponse à la demande croissante pour rendre les femmes visibles. Ayant contribué à développer de nouvelles méthodologies cherchant à reconstituer le passé à partir d’une approche « du bas vers le haut », la nouvelle histoire sociale leur a permis de développer le champ de l’histoire des femmes à travers le Canada. Notre article examine l’importance des associations féministes, des maisons d’édition, des revues et des prix comme soutien au développement de la recherche sur les femmes et l’éducation. Dans un second temps, nous examinons les figures pionnières de la recherche dans ce domaine, en nous concentrant d’abord sur les personnalités importantes du Canada anglais, avant de poursuivre avec l’histoire de ce champ de recherche au Canada français.

Combustion 2000

This report is a presentation of work carried out on Phase II of the HIPPS program under DOE contract DE-AC22-95PC95144 from June 1995 to March 2001. The objective of this report is to emphasize the results and achievements of the program and not to archive every detail of the past six years of effort. These details are already available in the twenty-two quarterly reports previously submitted to DOE and in the final report from Phase I. The report is divided into three major foci, indicative of the three operational groupings of the program as it evolved, was restructured, or overtaken by events. In each of these areas, the results exceeded DOE goals and expectations. HIPPS Systems and Cycles (including thermodynamic cycles, power cycle alternatives, baseline plant costs and new opportunities) HITAF Components and Designs (including design of heat exchangers, materials, ash management and combustor design) Testing Program for Radiative and Convective Air Heaters (including the design and construction of the test furnace and the results of the tests) There are several topics that were part of the original program but whose importance was diminished when the contract was significantly modified. The elimination of the subsystem testing and the Phase III demonstration lessened the relevance of subtasks related to these efforts. For example, the cross flow mixing study, the CFD modeling of the convective air heater and the power island analysis are important to a commercial plant design but not to the R&D product contained in this report. These topics are of course, discussed in the quarterly reports under this contract. The DOE goal for the High Performance Power Plant System ( HIPPS ) is high thermodynamic efficiency and significantly reduced emissions. Specifically, the goal is a 300 MWe plant with > 47% (HHV) overall efficiency and {le} 0.1 NSPS emissions. This plant must fire at least 65% coal with the balance being made up by a premium fuel such as natural gas. To achieve these objectives requires a change from complete reliance of coal-fired systems on steam turbines (Rankine cycles) and moving forward to a combined cycle utilizing gas turbines (Brayton cycles) which offer the possibility of significantly greater efficiency. This is because gas turbine cycles operate at temperatures well beyond current steam cycles, allowing the working fluid (air) temperature to more closely approach that of the major energy source, the combustion of coal. In fact, a good figure of merit for a HIPPS design is just how much of the enthalpy from coal combustion is used by the gas turbine. The efficiency of a power cycle varies directly with the temperature of the working fluid and for contemporary gas turbines the optimal turbine inlet temperature is in the range of 2300-2500 F (1260-1371 C). These temperatures are beyond the working range of currently available alloys and are also in the range of the ash fusion temperature of most coals. These two sets of physical properties combine to produce the major engineering challenges for a HIPPS design. The UTRC team developed a design hierarchy to impose more rigor in our approach. Once the size of the plant had been determined by the choice of gas turbine and the matching steam turbine, the design process of the High Temperature Advanced Furnace (HITAF) moved ineluctably to a down-fired, slagging configuration. This design was based on two air heaters: one a high temperature slagging Radiative Air Heater (RAH) and a lower temperature, dry ash Convective Air Heater (CAH). The specific details of the air heaters are arrived at by an iterative sequence in the following order:-Starting from the overall Cycle requirements which set the limits for the combustion and heat transfer analysis-The available enthalpy determined the range of materials, ceramics or alloys, which could tolerate the temperatures-Structural Analysis of the designs proved to be the major limitation-Finally the commercialization issues of fabrication and reliability, availability and maintenance. The program that has sought to develop and implement these HIPPS designs is outlined below