Linda Silver Dranoff - Fairly Equal: Lawyering the Feminist Revolution

This is a unique book and surprisingly difficult to introduce. It is an intensely personal memoir set in the era of second-wave feminism in Canada, and it is an historical account spanning many decades. Yet it is even more. It is, in the most profound sense of the word, a witness statement.

And what a witness. My good friend Linda Silver Dranoff is no bystander. She wasand she remainsa conscious participant. I have known her for many years, and we have been having wide-ranging conversations about life, feminism, and public policy since we first met some thirty years ago, when we both served on the Advisory Board of Women in Educational Administration Ontario. I have seen this civically conscious woman, combining her profound personal convictions with uncompromising professional competence, spearhead change that advanced womens lives in crucial ways. In fact, one of the remarkable aspects of Lindas life was the unity between her professional and civic lifeshe was a lawyer and writer, a mother, a member of a family and community, and an activist, all at once.

The world in which Linda grew up and later decided to enter law school was vastly different from the one in which we live today. In those days of restricted opportunities and expectations, women rarely became lawyersespecially not one who was divorced and a mother. There was almost no publicly available child care, discrimination against women flourished, and job opportunities were limited.

Many of the changes that Lindas work helped enact are now normal parts of Canadian lifeso much so that students of my students find it difficult to imagine a Canada before laws required equal sharing of assets accumulated during a marriage, or maternity leave, or pension sharing, or pay equity, or the availability of divorce. For those who did not live through these timesand for many of us who didthis book will serve as a vital reminder of the magnitude of social change this country has experienced over the past decades, change that includes enormous and beneficial shifts in family law, an improved attitude toward womens equality, and laws to ensure that positive changes can be maintained.

Even more striking is the way in which many of these changes occurred. As a lawyer and writer, Linda elucidated the inequities facing women and knew what had to be done to resolve them. The fact that she was able to inspire others to join her in the fightbe they members of the legal system, politicians, or like-minded men and women from all walks of lifespeaks volumes about her determination, her sense of fairness and justice, and her tenacity. Working on her own and with others, she convinced the establishment of the day to recognize and lighten the burdens of unfairness, injustice, and inequality, primarily, but by no means exclusively, on women. By working to improve the lives of women, she chose to be a catalyst for the betterment of all, and she demonstrated what one person can do, even seemingly against all odds.

It is perhaps this unique quality that made others respond to Linda in the way they did. Her influential columns in Chatelaine were written from a wish to share her knowledge and perspective. She could imagine herself in the place of the reader who needed to understand the legal realities. Her letters to the editor, written to influence policy-makers and public opinion, not only became treasures for the womens movement but also examples of the competence and thrust that made them publishable and quotable.