Canada endorsed the Decade goals and undertook to achieve them. For Canada, commitment to Decade goals represented a further development in women's recent struggle for equality. This earlier concerted effort by women had focused on implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Established in 1967, the Commission reported to the Federal Government in 1970. The report's 167 recommendations were formulated to ensure equal opportunities for women in all aspects of Canadian society. Since that time, three important milestones occurred that undoubtedly have had an impact on women's progress through the Decade for Women:

1. In response to one of the recommendations, the Federal Government established the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women in 1973. This was followed by the establishment of provincial councils whose mandates were to raise issues of concern to women, to provide research and background material to clarify these issues, and to make recommendations to their respective governments.
   
   Part of the function of the Canadian Advisory Council has been to monitor Federal Government action on the original Royal Commission recommendations and to adapt the United Nations World Plan of Action to the issues of specific concern to Canadian women.
   
   
2. In 1985, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into affect with the inclusion, after intensive lobbying by women's groups, of Section 28: "Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons".
   
   
3. In addition numerous legal changes have occurred to reduce direct discrimination against women. For example:

• In 1978, the federal Human Rights Act came into effect. The Act contains a provision for equal pay for work of equal value which applies to all federal public servants and employees of federal Crown federally regulated private sector companies.
  
  
• In 1983, an Affirmative Action Program* was initiated for women in the federal Public Service and Crown Corporations.
  
  
• In the summer of 1986, the Employment Equity Act (Bill C-62) came into effect. While not as strong as women's groups had hoped and the Abella Commission recommended, the Act does extend employment equity to federally regulated companies and contains " contract compliance" requirements for companies. that contract with the government for more than $200,000 annually and employ more than 100 people.

Now that the Decade for Women has ended and concomitant legislative changes for women have been made, it is appropriate to assess the extent to which Canada has met its commitment to improve the position of women in Canadian society.

Although some Canadian progress reports were prepared during the Decade, a requirement for signator countries, these reports do not provide longitudinal or statistical information for an in-depth assessment of changes in the status of Canadian women (e.g., As Things Stand: Ten Years of Recommendations, Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1983; Equality in Employment: A Royal Commission Report, 1984; Towards Equality for Women: A Progress Report 1979-1982, Status of Women Canada, 1984).

Others contain adequate statistical information but provide little insight into either its meaning or effect (e.g., Women in Canada, A Statistical Report, Statistics Canada, March, 1985). While each is valuable and was consulted for the present study, none completely fulfills the present research need.

* Prior to 1985, the term "Affirmative Action" was used to describe special measures programs initiated on behalf of women, ethnocultural minorities and people with disabilities. Following publication of the Abella Commission report, Equality in Employment, the term "employment equity" replaced Affirmative Action.