Bøker av Denyse Baillargeon

To Be Equals in Our Own Country chronicles the bitter struggle for women's suffrage in Quebec, the last province to grant Canadian women this fundamental human right.

A Brief History of Women in Quebec examines the historical experience of women of different social classes and origins (geographic, ethnic, and racial) from the period of contact between Europeans and Aboriginals to the twenty-first century to give a nuanced and complex account of the main transformations in their lives. Themes explored include demography, such as marriage, fecundity, and immigration; womens work outside and inside the home, including motherhood; education, from elementary school to post-secondary and access to the professions; the impact of religion and government policies; and social and political activism, including feminism and struggles to attain equality with men. Early chapters deal with New France and the first part of the nineteenth century, and the remaining are devoted to the period since 1880, an era in which womens lives changed rapidly and dramatically. The book concludes that transformation in the means of production, womens social and political activism (including feminism), and Quebec nationalism are three main keys to understanding the history of Quebec women. Together, the three show that womens history, far from being an adjunct to general history, is essential to a full understanding of the past. Originally published in French with the title Breve histoire des femmes au Quebec.

Described by some as a necropolis for babies, the province of Quebec in the early twentieth century recorded infant mortality rates, particularly among French-speaking Catholics, that were among the highest in the Western world. This bleeding of the nation gave birth to a vast movement for child welfare that paved the way for a medicalization of childbearing. In Babies for the Nation , basing her analysis on extensive documentary research and more than fifty interviews with mothers, Denyse Baillargeon sets out to understand how doctors were able to convince women to consult them, and why mothers chose to follow their advice. Her analysis considers the medical discourse of the time, the development of free services made available to mothers between 1910 and 1970, and how mothers used these services. Showing the variety of social actors involved in this process (doctors, nurses, womens groups, members of the clergy, private enterprise, the state, and the mothers themselves), this study delineates the alliances and the conflicts that arose between them in a complex phenomenon that profoundly changed the nature of childbearing in Quebec. Un Quebec en mal denfants: La medicalisation de la maternite 19101970 was awarded the Clio-Quebec Prize, the Lionel Groulx-Yves-Saint-Germain Prize, and the Jean-Charles-Falardeau Prize. This translation by W. Donald Wilson brings this important book to a new readership.