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Evidence and Analysis
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        Women’s experience is overlooked in most of the scholarly literature addressing the subject of American migration to Canada during the Vietnam War.  Using limited primary accounts of this particular migration sample, the too oft neglected woman’s experience and struggle with identity can be better understood.  While in the United States, draft-age women were prevented from playing major roles in the antiwar movement.  Through migration to Canada these women were able to make a larger impact in the efforts against American involvement in the Vietnam War.  Because of their gender, these women were in a unique position; not subject to the draft, these women had the free choice to decide to migrate.  This project will address this unique, though often overlooked and minimized, role of draft-age American women who migrated to Canada during the Vietnam War.
       
Draft-age women's role in the antiwar movement in the United States
        As the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War developed, so did the antiwar movement.  Thousands of American men were coming home in body bags, and numerous others were missing in action or prisoners of war.  Those most affected by the institution of the draft were younger men.  However, the protest movement picked up speed and support from both young men and women with little else to commit their lives to except for a movement that advocated peace rather than war.  While men could burn their draft cards in public protest, young women could only take second billing when it came to any antiwar planned protests or meetings, though in the beginning women felt they had as much right as men to actively protest the draft (Thorne, 181).   There is documentation that proves young women were highly involved in the antiwar movement, but in these same sources, there is a definite line drawn between the role of men and women in the movement.  Women were not directly affected by the draft, and, therefore, their contributions to the antiwar movement were marginalized and motives questioned (Thorne, 186-7).   Leslie Cagan describes the “logic” behind why men were weary of women’s participation on the anti-draft movement.  ‘[We] were told that we could not be allowed to speak.  The “logic” went something like this: women did not face the draft and therefore women should not be involved in the decisions to be made about the tactic of draft resistance (Cagan, 9).’
        No matter how women tried to avoid being objectified, the movement for men was a way of expressing their masculinity.  Barrie Thorne refers to this ‘complex’ of manhood that dominated the antiwar movement and limited women’s role in it.  'This complex involved a highly sexual, objectified definition of women (women, in this rhetoric, were usually referred to as “chicks”).  The presence of women, defined as girlfriends, admirers, and bedpartners, was used to buttress an almost swaggering masculine role (Thorne, 184).'   Used more frequently as a prize for refusing the draft than for performing more political activities, women weren’t able to shake this rigid gender restriction and stereotyping.  Instead of being taken more seriously, young American women were made useful in the only capacity allotted them: they were to be cover girls.  In a campaign for the anti-draft movement, three girls modeled for a poster with the slogan “Girls Who Say Yes to Guys Who Say No”.  In essence, the poster was suggesting that resisting the draft was sexy and girls would automatically become intimate with men solely for the reason of his being a draft-resister (Thorne, 184).
        There were a few women, however, who were able to take a more involved role in the organizational tactics of the movement (Figure 1).  Helen Adams worked as a draft counselor, despite its unlawfulness, because she believed in the cause. 
‘Draft counseling was made available for people who wanted to leave the country after being drafted.  My job was to assist these young men, some of them deserters, some resisters.  Of course the whole thing was illegal, and I was not always in agreement with the position a refuser or a deserter might take…one form of refusal is to run away…I felt it was an act of honor to refuse the bloodshed of an unjust war (Hayton-Keeva, 88).’  
Not many women were able to take such an active and responsible role in the antiwar or anti-draft movement, at least not in the beginning of its formation.  Women tried to prove their commitment to the movement, alongside over draft-age men, by “laying themselves on the line”.  They would aid and abet resistance to the draft, an outright violation of the Selective Service Law (Thorne, 187).   Even when an all-women group, who called themselves “Women Against Daddy Warbucks”, destroyed draft files in 1969 they never received the same treatment as men.  The antiwar movement took advantage of this difference in response due to gender and women, once again, were used for their special circumstances as Thorne points out.
'Even when they took the same actions, women and men often met with differential response.  In general – a fact not lost on the antiwar movement – the government was less willing to move against women than against men.  No women have been indicted on the charge of aiding and abetting draft resistance or for burning draft cards, although men have been indicted on both accounts.  At some antiwar demonstrations, women were less vulnerable to arrest (Thorne, 188).'
Despite their willingness to play the decoy or the vivacious prize, many young women desired to make a greater impact on the antiwar movement.

Older Women's Involvement in the antiwar movement in the United States
        There was, however, a group of women who successfully made their mark on the antiwar and anti-draft movements.  Women Strike for Peace (WSP) formed in the 1960s and was made up of middle-aged, middle-class, white women who opposed the war in Vietnam.  Amy Swerdlow examines the involvement of these slightly older women and proposes a rather interesting question regarding their triumph in the antiwar movement compared to their younger sisters. 
'Why and how, given the stereotypical division of gender roles within the draft resistance movement, could the middle-aged, middle-class women of WSP find an effective and satisfying role for themselves, while the radical draft-age young women experienced a level of “trivialization” so denigrating that most of them left to form what they called “our own resistance" (Swerdlow, 159-160)?'  
The answer lays in their age and in, at least at the start, their assumption of traditional gender roles.  While younger women were seen as involved for reasons such as finding a boyfriend, the WSPs made their actions in the ‘name of outraged motherhood (Swerdlow, 160).’   Another reason why older women were more successful than younger ladies in the antiwar movement was their status in society.  Compared to the young unmarried females who assisted the anti-draft efforts, ‘the middle-class married women of WSP had achieved social standing in the community (Swerdlow, 161).’   Because of their unique position in society, WSPs were able to act collectively and independently of men, while gaining more credible support for the anti-draft movement from “adults”.  In a newsletter from Nashville, WSPs urged women to go to court inductions and arraignments, “because an adult on a picket line does wonders for young people and for their ‘press image' (Swerdlow, 165).”   These middle-aged, middle-class women were vital to the anti-draft movement in gaining public respect and attention, and in staffing draft counseling centers, as they hadn’t full-time jobs to distract them from their priorities.  Though they entered the political arena in their accepted traditional female roles, they weren’t limited by such stereotypes as they expanded their political awareness and involvement later in the antiwar movement (Swerdlow, 170).

Migration to Canada
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