A great source of grievance for feminists was the fact that women were not permitted homestead rights. This was seen as a great injustice as many of these women contributed a good part of the domestic and field labour in Canada's rural areas. Such heavy outside labour was especially common in the case of recent and poorer middle European immigrants.
Seen here are Doukobour women in Saskatchewan separating the grain from the chaff after it has been flailed. A sight like this was not uncommon, particularly in situations where the men of the immigrant families were away from home working on Canada's national railways. With the hopes of gaining a cheap and hard working labour force, the Laurier government had introduced a new immigration policy at the end of the nineteenth century. Many of these new arrivals worked on the railways in an attempt to make the money that was necessary to establish themselves as farmers. Thus the women were left to do the bulk of the work. The importance of these and other women's contributions were to be recognized by male farmers, and organizations such as the United Farmers of Ontario, the United Farmers of Alberta, and the Saskatchewan Grain Growers became early supporters of women suffrage.
