Since the time when the Royal Commission expressed its concern on the topic, there has been a more visible presence of women in public life. These days there are fewer boards and commissions without a single female member, but even that still happens regularly these days. If a board or commission has two women on it the government which has appointed them thinks it has gone beyond tokenism to true equality. In the private sector there are still many if not most boards without any representation of women on them. We finally have one female judge in the Supreme Court of Canada. We need more female judges throughout the judiciary and on the Supreme Court as well.

At the same time that the women's movement was lobbying for change in some laws and administrative practices, we were also building new organizations and discovering new issues which affected the lives of Canadian women. The last 13 years have seen the creation and growth of vibrant voluntary status-of-women action groups in each province, and advisory councils on the status of women in most provinces. They have seen the founding and development of several important national organizations, such as CRIAW, CCLOW, NAC and NAWL. And, for the actual day-to- day life of women in this country, the founding and maintenance, against great odds, of grass-roots groups , across the country providing crucial services to women, providing support, advice, counselling, access to social services, and a place to be--a woman- centered place in the community. I am thinking of the women's centres, the sexual assault crisis centres, the transition houses for battered women, the feminist counselling centres, the birth control clinics, the employment services, the parent-run child care centres, and all those places across the country, usually worn and battered, with hand-me-down furniture, lots of feminist posters on the walls, where there are hard-working, dedicated women, trying to make life better for each other. Those of you who have done that kind of work know about the funding crises, the government bureaucratic paper- work, and the burn-out which accompany trying to provide these basic support services for women. It's hard to remember, especially in these bad times when services have been cut back and most such places are fighting just to stay alive, that this network of organizations across the country is the front-line of the women's movement, and that in founding them, building them, and exploring and discovering how we want to work together we have the outline of what feminist institutions could look like.

At the same time that the feminist movement has built these new institutions, we have also begun to transform old ones, such as the unions, the political parties, and the churches. Despite the fact that most women work in sectors of the economy which are not unionized, women represent the most rapidly growing part of the unions, and the power of women within their unions are increasing significantly. Women in unions experience less disparity between their wages and those of men than do non-unionized women.

Unions have bargained for better maternity leave benefits, for clauses protecting women against sexual harassment, for protection against work hazards to reproduction, for better working conditions and fringe benefits. Women inside unions still have a long way to go in order to be equally represented in all levels of the union hierarchy and in decision-making roles. The culture of the unions is still largely male. But that is changing. When the OFL does a major lobbying effort for increased and affordable child care in Ontario, when it joins women's groups in calling for mandatory affirmative action, when CUPW goes on strike for maternity leave benefits--then the unions, have come a long way on women's issues. They still have a long way to go.

Women in the political parties have always been active workers. Women have organized campaigns and volunteered for the hard labour of getting other people elected. It is only in the last few years, however, that women's committees within the political parties have gotten some of their issues on the political agenda of their parties. Women are more visible in the higher reaches of party life now than ever before. In the past women have been very feebly rewarded for their party loyalty and party work. It has been the norm in all the parties for women to be nominated to run in ridings and for seats in which they are doomed to lose. There has been an enormous increase in the number of women elected to school boards, city councils and as mayors in Canada. In local politics our presences are beginning to be felt. In the provincial legislative there has been slow but visible progress. Like the unions, the parties have come a long way. They still have a long way to go.