How did Canadian women achieve the right to be elected to the Senate?
In 1927, five women asked the Supreme Court of Canada if the word person referred to females. What happened next?
According to the Constitutional Act of British North America, the main law of Canada, only a qualified person, a 'competent person', could be elected to the Senate. Three conditions were specified: age over 30, property worth at least $4,000 CAD and residence in the province from which the candidate was running.
In 1867 the word "personhood" meant only men, but in 1922 women activists Alberta decided to nominate Emily Murphy, the first female judge in Canada, to the Senate. Thousands of people across Canada supported the idea, and it was widely reported in the newspapers. The government refused, citing the Constitutional Act. The Prime Minister raised the question of an amendment to the Act, but the Senators began to stall.
By 1927, in all Canadian provinces except Quebec, women could vote in elections. Times had changed. Under the Canadian Supreme Court Act, a group of five people could ask the government to instruct the Supreme Court to interpret a point in the law. And on August 27, 1927, Emily Murphy and four other women wrote a petition demanding a determination of whether a woman was a person.
Six months later, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that women were not among the "personalities" mentioned in the law, since in 1867 no one could imagine a woman in a position of responsibility. Then Emily Murphy and her activist friends appealed to the highest court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.
In 1929 an English court ruled that women could still be senators. Emily Murphy was never elected to the Senate, but women were legally recognized as individuals, which was already a huge step forward. On February 15, 1930, Caryn Wilson became Canada's first woman senator.
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