Equality Deferred: Sex Discrimination and British Columbia’s Human Rights State, 1953-84

by Dominique Clément,  Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta, published by the University of British Columbia Press. 2014.

One of the most profound changes to our law in the second half of the twentieth century was what is often termed the ‘rights revolution’. The same period also saw the rise of a plethora of administrative agencies to administer law and policy in many areas. Professor Clement’s pioneering study combines these two phenomena, providing a history of the origins and operation of human rights law and the human rights commission in British Columbia. It focusses particularly on sex discrimination, and documents the political debates surrounding human rights law, analyses the role of social movements in developin1g the law, and discusses the working of the tribunals and human rights investigators who put the law into practice.