Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 18

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Popular Culture Review

reorder the gendered construction of work in the home.
Though the poet’s fears about complete gender reversals were exaggerated,
women did gain a greater voice in the public sphere through their work with food.
This is most clearly demonstrated when one turns attention to WI members and
their work in community catering. Women’s work in community food provision
was most often done for the purpose of fundraising.-^ What did this work mean to
the women who were involved in it? Because of their role in community food
provision and the profits they generated from that work, women had an important
voice in shaping community life.-^ Very often the funds on hand gave the women
the financial power to provide a community meeting space. Such was the case
with the Stratton Women’s Insti tute. “The Stratton women had a dream. It was to
provide a place for the community to meet together for social and cultural growth.
And so they had bake-sales [sic], teas, suppers, anything that would raise money.”
From the proceeds of their public food service, they bought a hall, and according
to a 1929 report in the local Tweedswiiir History Book, “the Hall has been the
centre of social and cultural life of Stratton. Local Dramatic Club plays were
highlights for many years. It has been used as a polling booth in elections. The
Institute sponsored a TB Clinic.”^^ In Ayr, Ontario the WI branch determined to
purchase a piano for the community hall. They could then dictate who would use
that instrument, for what purpose and at what price. In effect, control over their
fundraising dollars allowed the Institute women to shape the nature of community
leisure organisation. Certainly there was more going on here than compliance with
the assumption that whenever a public event was hosted, the women could be
counted on to make the sandwiches. Although they probably did provide the lunch,
by doing so, women were generating money that gave them license to control what
the next community event might be.
The 1924 Annual Report gave a typical example of women who directed
their fundraising proceeds to the local public library and cemetery. After donating
to those projects, “the balance.. .was invested in .. .gravelling the schoolyard. This
yard had been in a very muddy condition and when the Institute, through the woman
school trustee, brought this to the attention of the board, the board agreed to pay
for the gravel if the Institute would bear the expense of hauling it — an interesting
piece of community co-operation.”^* Yet work with the schools usually went far
beyond improvements to schoolyards. As an extension of domestic responsibility
in providing for one’s own family, women took on the responsibility to be
community nutritionists when they decided to provide solid nutrition for the children
of the community through school lunch programs from the 1920s onward. In her
study of the Women’s Institutes of British Columbia, Carol Dennison has argued
that members extended their homemaking skill to the community in practical ways
to achieve reform.-^