Helen Armstrong was a prominent figure for females during the Winnipeg General Strike. She was a mother of four and a part of the working class who became a voice for women in 1917 when she started working with the Women’s Labor League. After two years of service, she was promoted to the president of the organization. She was also presented with the opportunity to join the Central Strike Committee and was one of the two women on the committee of fifty individuals. Armstrong was an advocate for all women during the strike, and she was notably against wage inequality. Academic Paula Kelly explains Armstrong’s significance in a time of turmoil, stating “Whether walking the picket line, making her case in the provincial legislature, or facing the police court magistrate, Helen Armstrong was an outspoken and vigorous advocate for all labouring women: laundresses, retail workers, stenographers, telephone operators, hotel waitresses; the list went on and on. In one letter to the deputy minister of labour, she went to bat for the candy-industry girls, citing case after case of poor wages, constant layoffs, and petty persecutions that made ‘the lives of many of our working girls … so unbearable that in the end the street claims them as easy prey.” Armstrong was also a major driving force in the organization of women. She believed that women organizing would result in social, political, and economic improvements. She shared in a letter to the editor of a Canadian newspaper that “Girls have got to learn to fight as men have had to do for the right to live, and we women of the Labor League are spending all our spare time in trying to get girls to organize as the master class have done to protect their own interests” (Kelly). The leadership from Armstrong is credited as a major factor in women’s participation in unions and labour activism (McMaster, 125). Armstrong’s overall intensity and devotion to activism eventually led to her being thrown in jail, as she was intent on making sure scabbing employees understand their work was not appreciated by the strikers.