Women have made significant gains in education. They are the majority in most fields of study and their numbers are growing, even in male-dominated fields. Women's incomes are increasing along with their education and labour force participation. Since 1985, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of Canada's Constitution, has guaranteed equal rights to women and men as well as special measures to correct past discrimination on the basis of sex. Discrimination is also prohibited in the human rights acts of the Government of Canada and all ten provinces.
Women are increasingly active in public life at all levels.
Women also have extensive representation in the provinces and territories, and at the municipal level on city councils and school boards. As of 1999, women held 26.9 percent of executive positions in the federal public service. For the first time, we now have a female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The achievement of basic political rights in the early part of this century set the stage for the much larger, more organized women's movement of today. In the 1960s, individual women and women's organizations convinced the federal government to establish the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.