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Forty years ago, in 1970, the outstanding bestseller was the final report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which sold out its first printing in three days. Every woman seemed to have her own copy. The report -- three years in preparation -- "woke up Canadian women to the inequities in the system." Actually, it woke up the country. There was no going back.
The process started in mid-February 1967, when Prime Minister Lester Pearson created the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. A coalition of women's groups across Canada had pressured him to do so, but he had resisted, partly because the press was "very negative to the idea."
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By the time the Commission held hearings in the Maritimes in the fall of 1968, the times they were a-changing. Pressure for women's "liberation" was felt in most homes and by governments. The media were making less fun of women and the Commission. Yet appearing before the Commission still required bravery, accorded to someone who presented to its hearing in New Brunswick.
In an effort to hear from ordinary women, the Commission had released a how-to pamphlet on preparing a presentation and holding kitchen meetings. These consciousness-raising sessions brought out common issues.
Indeed, Commissioners said they were amazed how similar the issues and the women were across Canada. The stories women told were commonplace, at least to many women, but they made media headlines. Media were shocked to discover discrimination on the job, sexism in schools, in school textbooks and in school sports, and back-room abortions. Then there were the missing elements, such as lack of childcare, of child support enforcement, of supports for women re-entering the labour force and of access to birth control information.
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Mary Two-Axe Early, a Mohawk from Quebec, galvanized the Commission and the nation with her presentation against the sex discrimination in the Indian Act; the Royal Commission recommended the repeal of that section of the Act.
The Commission's 167 recommendations proposed guaranteed annual incomes for single parents and for pensioners, fairer tax laws; admission of women to the RCMP; provisions for maternity leave. It called for prohibiting sex discrimination in employment and appointing more female judges and Senators.
For decades afterwards, the report was the blueprint for Canadian women's activism. The famous NAC -- the National Action Committee on the Status of Women -- was originally formed precisely to monitor government's implementation of the Commission's recommendations.
Federal and provincial governments created advisory bodies on women's issues, and Canadian governments became known for innovation in advancing gender equality.
There was even a time (1984) when federal election campaigns included a leaders' debate on women's issues. Funds were made available to challenge discriminatory laws, because people cared enough to flush those out.
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Commission Chair Florence Bird was better known to Canadians as broadcaster Anne Francis, a pen name she borrowed from a great grandmother "to avoid embarrassing her husband with her feminist ideas." In an interview on her 90th birthday, she said, "I am an unrepentant feminist. I can't imagine what else a thinking person could be."
Commissioner John Humphrey dissociated himself from the final report of the Commission and wrote his own "minority report." One reason was that he thought the Report was "unfair to the married woman at home." He also thought paid maternity leave would discriminate against childless women and non-working women.
Humphrey did not agree with pay equity for civil servants, nor increased funding for daycares or family allowances. He did not see the need for a Status of Women Council since the functions could be performed by the Human Rights Commission. He did not agree with measures to help women since he thought with all the changes happening, "the destiny of women is in their own hands."
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The only Commissioner who thought of herself as feminist before her appointment to the Commission was Elsie Gregory MacGill, daughter of Judge Helen Gregory McGill. She was the world's first female aircraft designer, whom comic books dubbed "Queen of the Hurricanes", but whose greatest achievement might be to have openly embraced feminist goals while pursuing a successful career in engineering for 40 years.
- reprinted from Straight Goods