It's hard not to feel wistful in 2010 when recalling the excitement of the early 1970s, when feminism was becoming mainstream, women were demanding greater equality, and many young people believed they were building a new world without the limits that had constrained many of their mothers and grandmothers.
In many respects, that 40-year-old optimism has been borne out. Women have flooded into universities, poured into the work force and have won critical battles in areas of non-discriminatory treatment and equal pay. But in other respects, women have good reason to be disappointed. While they have made great strides in four decades, they still remain a small minority in the narrower world of power and authority in society today.
Many women now in their sixties say this power gap is the greatest unfulfilled promise of the early feminist era. And they have rightly concluded it is a failing that Canada can no longer ignore, or complacently expect to correct itself.
In the business sector, women make up 47 per cent of Canada's work force, but fill just 17 per cent of corporate officer positions in Canada's 500 largest organizations, according to a 2009 analysis by the consulting group Catalyst. Those numbers are highest at Crown corporations (with 26 per cent female officers) and lowest at publicly traded companies (where 14 per cent of corporate officers are women). Women constitute 13 per cent of board directors in the same group of 500 companies.
In law, banking, academia and politics, the numbers are equally weak for the top tiers of workers in the most senior "power jobs."
In the House of Commons, for example, 22 per cent of MPs are women, up just marginally from the previous record of 21 per cent, set back in 1993. The three main political parties are led by men, and all of Canada's 10 provincial premiers are men, although the Premier of Nunavut, Eva Aariak, is a woman.
In capital markets - jobs at brokerage firms - women are still a small minority of the overall work force, and hold just 10 per cent of jobs at the managing director level or higher, based on Catalyst data from Canada's six largest financial institutions. In academia, one-quarter of deans at Canada's English-speaking universities were women, based on 2008 data - a quarter of them heading nursing and education faculties. And women account for 18 per cent of partners at law firms in Ontario, according to the Law Society of Upper Canada.
This is not to say that women have been unsuccessful in these professions. They have swelled the ranks of lawyers, doctors and small business entrepreneurs in Canada. But a significant proportion are opting to work in small firms where they can be their own bosses and carve out the flexibility they want. And whatever job satisfaction that brings, it nonetheless means a minority of women are in the running for the power jobs that ultimately wield the greatest sway over society and the economy.
Certainly some women - just like some men - don't pursue power jobs because they demand huge time commitments that come at the expense of their families. Others are not attracted to the cut and thrust of leadership, or simply don't want the burden of responsibility that it brings.
But that only explains a part of the huge gender imbalance at the top. There also remains a long-standing prejudice that woman aren't as capable of leadership as men - that they are too emotional, or their commitment is too divided between family and career, or that they lack the strength to make tough decisions.
