Since 2011, Liberal Quebec Premier Jean Charest leads the first government in the world to achieve complete parity between men and women on the boards of all public corporations. The board of directors of these public corporations now employ as many men than women. When Jean Charest's governement adopted this law in 2006,  coroporations had 5 years to conform. This has now been acheived ! That is but the latest episode in the long historic quest by Quebec women to take their place in Quebec’s public life, a history punctuated by precedents and victories that mirror the history of the Quebec Liberal Party.

One of the first milestones occurred in 1939, when a group of women inspired by the ideas of Thérèse Casgrain became the first to take part in a political convention, that of the Liberal Party.  The following year, Liberal Premier Adélard Godbout stands fast in front of conservative opposition and grants Quebec women the right to vote.  With it comes the possibility to run for office in Quebec elections and, in 1961, Marie-Claire Kirkland-Casgrain becomes the first woman elected in Quebec, as a Liberal.  Within a year, she would also become the first woman named cabinet minister.

She would bring the Lesage government to adopt a bill granting married women independent legal capacity in 1964.  In 1973, the Bourassa government establishes the Council on the Status of Women, two year after adopting a law allowing women to serve as juries.  As for Jean Charest, soon after signing an historic agreement with public sector workers on pay equity, he announced in 2007 the composition of the first ever cabinet made up of an equal number of men and women.

This long march towards equal political rights and equivalent political roles has mirrored the progress made by Quebec women in all walks of life, every step forward in tune with the liberal values of the Party:

The incredible progress achieved in the education opportunities for young women since the reforms of the Lesage era, so much that young women now outnumber their male peers in Quebec universities;

The adoption, under the Bourassa government, of the family estate law, which contributed enormously to the financial independence of single mothers;

The creation in 2006 of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan, which helps parents reconcile career and family aspirations like never before;

The formal entrenchment of equality between men and women in the Quebec Charter of Individual Rights and Freedoms.