The '50s was the decade when many of the husbands' wives simmered in the suburbs, their frustrations finally articulated by Betty Frieden in The Feminine Mystique, the landmark book that launched the modern women's movement for equality in the '60s. In Canada in 1967 a Royal Commission on the Status of Women headed by Florence Bird gave women a forum for their grievances. Four years later, it presented the government with 465 recommendations concerning women's equality, of which, Bird reported last year, a record two-thirds have been acted upon since.

"There is a flip side to these wins," says NAC president [Louise Dulude]. "The employment and equal pay (for equal work) laws were pretty hollow victories because women don't do the same jobs as men. That explains why they were so easy to win. Now the resistance is much stronger to equal pay for work of equal value. And the (new divorce laws mean) family law courts have been giving smaller maintenance orders to women and insisting more and more that (divorced) homemakers in their 50s go out and earn a living."

Women within the movement have their preferences. [Margrit Eichler] also wants a "feminist examination" of the judicial system so that it becomes more sensitive to feminist issues, as well as slicker and better organized lobbying by feminist groups such as NAC.