The timing for International Women’s Day this year seems perfect-the country is still celebrating the outstanding Olympic performances of Jennifer Heil, Cindy Klassen, Clara Hughes, and the women’s hockey team, among other fine athletes who represented Canada with such energy at the Games.

These ladies impressed all with their determination to excel and the sense of joy they brought to their sports, a feeling that appeared to be lacking in some of the men’s squads. In fact, these Olympic successes capped a good year for women in pro sports, a year that saw Annika Sorenstam hold her own on the PGA tour and Major League Baseball’s hall of fame recently welcome its first female member, a pioneering Negro League executive named Effa Manley.

As commercially artificial as it was, seeing Hayley Wickenheiser shill for Hamburger Helper during the Games actually represented a new high for Canadian female athletes as economic engines, much as Mia Hamm’s shampoo commercials and charitable enterprises drew corporate attention to female athletes in the States.

But women’s ascendancy in sports has not been met by similar gains in other social strata. Like the integration movement of the 1950s, when blacks could succeed on the ball diamond but not in the boardroom, women still face uphill battles in corporate and political playing fields that were supposed to have been leveled long ago.

Politically, Stephen Harper disappointed women’s groups with his new cabinet’s dearth of female ministers. The few women in the House were given “soft” portfolios like heritage and international cooperation while other tough, competent MPs like Alberta’s Diane Ablonczy were passed over altogether.

Harper missed a good chance to change our political spectrum for the better by more accurately representing Canadian society as a whole, a society that claims to value contributions from all, regardless of gender.

But reality has proven that, though women can achieve positions of importance, these positions are usually secondary in relation to their male counterparts. A woman has never been president at U of T, for example, although women have held many key VP and provost positions. And while many women climb to the VP level, it’s rare to find a female CEO at the top of the corporate ladder.

Whether this state of affairs exists due to lingering sexism or the slow pace of concrete change, the next few years will hopefully see a rise in the number of females undertaking society’s top jobs.

On the horizon, there are several women at home and abroad poised to contend for positions of leadership; Hillary Clinton and perhaps Condoleezza Rice seem ready to make a run at the presidency in 2008, while in these parts Belinda Stronach will likely run for Liberal leader and Jane Pitfield will soon challenge David Miller for his mayoral seat.

Our own SAC has been a welcome reformer in fostering female members: a victory for chairperson candidate Jen Hassum this year would make her council’s second female leader in the past three years.

While it is not prudent to seek out candidates for office or corporate positions solely based on any one criterion, it is exciting to consider the possibility that several of these women will be joining respected Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion as female role models.

There has undoubtedly been some solid progression towards gender equality over the last few decades, but social hierarchies do not change easily. Our society is equal in every way-in theory. In practice, things are just getting interesting.