The Women's Press

Identity area

Type of entity

Corporate body

Authorized form of name

The Women's Press

Parallel form(s) of name

    Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules

      Other form(s) of name

      • Canadian Women’s Educational Press

      Identifiers for corporate bodies

      Description area

      Dates of existence

      1971-

      History

      The Women’s Press (also known as the Canadian Women’s Educational Press) was founded in 1971, by a subgroup of the Toronto Women’s Liberation Movement, one of the first feminist political organizations in Toronto. The initiative for a feminist press grew out of a dissatisfaction with the mainstream publishing community which had rejected Women Unite!, the first compilation of Canadian contemporary feminist writing. Their mandate was to provide an alternative means of making feminist ideas widely accessible and continue their involvement in the growing Canadian women’s movement. The Canadian Women’s Educational Press, more commonly known as the Women’s Press, was started officially on a grant from the Toronto Local Initiates Project (LIP) as a socialist feminist collective publishing feminist fiction, non-fiction and non-sexist children’s books.

      In 1988 the Women’s Press began public discussion of an internal dispute regarding a proposed anti-racist policy. The discussions ended in a split within the Press with some original members departing to form the ‘Second Story Press’.

      Women’s Press is Canada’s oldest English language feminist publisher. For over forty years, Women’s Press has played an integral role in the proliferation of high-quality Canadian writing in the fields of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies.

      Places

      Legal status

      Functions, occupations and activities

      Mandates/sources of authority

      Internal structures/genealogy

      General context

      Relationships area

      Access points area

      Subject access points

      Place access points

      Occupations

      Control area

      Authority record identifier

      Maintained by

      Richard Charles Lee Chinese Canadian Archives

      Institution identifier

      Rules and/or conventions used

      Status

      Level of detail

      Dates of creation, revision and deletion

      Created by Alston So, March 2026.

      Language(s)

        Script(s)

          Sources

          The Women’s Press Authority Record, Archives and Special Collections of the University of Ottawa. https://arcs-atom.uottawa.ca/index.php/womens-press

          Maintenance notes