No More than Simple Justice: Assessing the Royal Commission Report on Women, Poverty and the Family

The Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada identified barriers to opportunities for women in a number of different contexts, and made recommendations for changes to improve opportunities for women and to ameliorate their problems. In reviewing the Report\u27s chapters on Family (Chapter IV) and Poverty (Chapter VI), this article assesses its underlying assumptions in the lives of women and men in Canada, and suggests a need to reassess more carefully the usefulness of legal strategies and the impact of family ideologies in designing feminist objectives for the 1990. Although the article is critical of the Report because of its failure to question such underlying assumptions, there is also recognition of the Report\u27s significant contribution in identifying the issues and in encouraging dialogue about equality objectives for women and the appropriate means of achieving them