Last month, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued a landmark ruling in the case of Ruth Walden and 430 of her fellow registered nurses employed by Social Development Canada, a department of the federal government.
Since 1972, the nurses have worked as "medical adjudicators," their job to determine if people applying for disability benefits under the Canada Pension Plan are eligible for support.
Physicians who carried out essentially the same duties were called "medical advisers."
The doctors and nurses got along well, as they do in most workplaces. They worked together in a common enterprise, using their medical knowledge to understand and assess documentation about complex cases of physical and mental disability.
(Neither the doctors nor the nurses provided claimants with hands-on patient care or conducted physical examinations, but their educational backgrounds were essential in properly assessing patient files.)
The medical adjudicators - the nurses - were paid salaries in the $50,000 to $60,000 range.
The medical advisers - the doctors - were paid about twice as much. They also received retention bonuses and more holidays, and had their professional fees paid by their employer.
This disparity persisted for decades despite the fact that they were doing more or less the same job, it must be stressed.
Clearly this is discriminatory.
It is also, according to the ruling by Karen Jensen of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
About 95 per cent of the nurses are women; about 80 per cent of the doctors are men. As the ruling states, the nurses' "inferior working conditions are a function of the gender predominance of their occupational group."
The ruling has attracted media attention, in large part, because of its financial repercussions.
Settling with the nurses could cost the treasury about $200-million. That astounding figure is based on a crude calculation - paying the nurses the equivalent of the doctors' salaries stretching back to 1978 (the year the Canadian Human Rights Act took effect.)
The final settlement will probably be much less. Ms. Jensen has told the two parties to come up with an agreed-upon figure by March or she will impose a settlement.
The irony of the situation is that, for nurses, the issue was never money, but respect.
The fight was not about nurses wanting to be doctors, or about wanting to get the same pay as doctors.
Rather, it was nurses fighting to be recognized as nurses.
At Social Development Canada, the medical advisers (the physicians) were, under the public-service classification scheme, deemed to be health professionals.
The medical adjudicators (the nurses), on the other hand, were classified as administrators.
To its credit, Social Development Canada recognized a few years back that this was wrong, but the Treasury Board prevented the department from reclassifying the nurses as health professionals, fearing it would cost money. (It would have cost a little then, but now it's going to cost a lot.) But the issue here is principle, not money.
The classification of the registered nurses as administrators was based on the belief that nursing consists solely of hands-on care. This is an outmoded, narrow-minded and sexist notion.
Just as physicians can undertake more cerebral administrative pursuits and still be considered health professionals, so can nurses.
Modern nurses work in diverse settings: They toil not only in hospitals and nursing homes, but on inner-city streets, battlefields in Afghanistan, refugee camps in Sudan, and in schools, public health units, northern nursing stations and myriad other locales, including insurance companies and various government agencies, doing everything from program development to running the show.
They are no less nurses.
The real story in this ruling is not the money. Rather, it is that the contemptuous attitude displayed by the federal government is all too common.
Nurses' pay is not paltry, but nor is it commensurate with the skills and training required.
The work environment of many nurses is disgraceful and the rate of physical and mental injury, from chronic back problems to burnout, is distressing.
None of this is coincidental to the fact that 96 per cent of nurses are women. A small group of nurses at Social Development Canada has pushed back and they have triumphed. Good on them.
But their victory will not be complete until the recognition and respect they have earned - albeit grudgingly - is universal.
Governments cannot content themselves with muttered excuses and cash payouts. They need to see nurses for what they are: health professionals who are the backbone of the health system.
When the human rights of nurses are fully respected, we will all be richer for it.