A Partnership of Equals: The Struggle for the Reform of Family Law in Manitoba

Lisa Fainstein is an assistant professor of law at the University of
Manitoba.

This in-depth study of the reform of family law in Manitoba takes the
reader inside the committee rooms and the politicians’ offices to give
a detailed view of the political process and of the politicians
themselves. No one is more aptly positioned to record the struggle for
women’s equality than Sisler, who was actively involved in
women’s-equality issues long before September 1970, when the report of
the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was submitted to
the House of Commons for debate.

In 1973, the case of farm wife Irene Murdoch focused attention on the
injustice and discrimination inherent in the laws governing married
women’s property rights. This book concentrates on the years following
the Murdoch case as being key to the movement to reform family law. The
NDP’s Saul Cherniak and Howard Pawley were two prominent proponents of
family-law reform. In June 1977, new and progressive family-law
legislation was introduced. Requiring the equal sharing of family
assets, joint ownership of the marital home, and mutual consent when
opting out of the standard marital regime, the law represented a
long-awaited recognition of the partnership of equals. Legislation
passed the following year under Sterling Lyon’s newly elected
Conservative government was regarded as a setback by many supporters of
family-law reform. As this volume so vividly illu-strates, the fight for
equality is not easily won.