The following op-ed by Sharon DeSousa, PSAC national president, was published on Rabble.ca.

When many people think about gender equity, they believe it’s a fight that’s been won long ago by our parents and grandparents.  

That’s far from the truth. The World Economic Forum recently announced it would take another five generations to achieve gender parity at our current pace.  

But they weren’t just sharing a statistic; they were issuing us a challenge to take action and do our part. 

As a labour movement, we have always understood that waiting for equality to fall into our laps isn't a strategy. Nobody is going to hand it to us on a silver platter without a fight. So consider this our call to action. History has repeatedly proven that when women organize, they accelerate change.  

In 1980, more than 10,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada members in clerical and regulatory jobs – more than 75% of them women – walked off the job in a groundbreaking strike that caught the government of the day off-guard. Nine days later, they secured a precedent-setting contract that saw their wages increase by 24.8%, paid maternity leave and major gains for family care. Their courage proved that collective power could transform working conditions and human rights protections, declaring that women workers would no longer accept second-class status in the workplace. 

We didn’t stop there. In 1984, PSAC filed a pay equity complaint against the federal government to compensate workers in female-dominated positions. After years of court battles, we won a $3.6 billion settlement in 1999, bringing us one step closer to ensuring women receive equal pay for work of equal value.  

Since then, we have pushed the government to pass the Pay Equity Act, which came into effect in 2021, ensuring that there are legal protections for all federally regulated workplaces in Canada. Today, we are still pressuring the government to fully implement the Act – they have already failed to meet their three-year deadline to fulfill the law’s requirements by 2024.  

We also continue to make important advances for jobs predominantly held by women, particularly in the north where PSAC represents over 4,000 health care workers, the majority being women. 

We’ve seen equality accelerated forward through the activism of other unions. The Communications Workers of Canada (now Unifor) fought a decade-long battle for pay equity against Bell Canada on behalf of female telephone operators. In 1993, they won a groundbreaking decision at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal establishing a legal framework that would benefit generations of women workers. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers also fought for equality, and in 2018 they won significant wage increases for rural and suburban mail carriers, a mostly female workforce.  

These victories remind us that every time unions have pushed for women's rights, what might have taken generations of gradual progress was achieved in years through collective action. 

We have made a lot of progress, but we have a lot more work to do. The wage gap still exists, especially for women with intersecting identities, who are non-unionized or work in the private sector. Gender-based discrimination has evolved into new forms. Which is why waiting until 2158 for full equality is not just an unacceptable timeline, but a failure of imagination and will. 

International Women's Day is rooted in a history of labour activism, born from the struggles of working women fighting for better conditions and equal rights. For PSAC members, this connection between labour rights and women's rights is an active legacy. March 8th is an opportunity to remember that the benefits we often take for granted, from maternity leave to pay equity legislation, were won from the collective action of workers who refused to accept the status quo and instead, organized. 

This year's theme of "Accelerate Action" captures that important lesson: rights are won through collective struggle – not by waiting around for change.  

As we mark International Women's Day 2025, let’s look beyond celebrating past achievements and recommit to the fight ahead. Five generations is too long to wait. Through union solidarity and action, we must accelerate the timeline to equality. Our history proves this is possible. Our present demands it. Our future depends on it.