PERSPECTIVE| FES WASHINGTON Regress trumps progress: Canadian women, feminism and the Harper government SYLVIA BASHEVKIN July 2012  Canadian women and organized feminism achieved measurable gains under a series of Liberal federal governments from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.  Women’s groups, particularly in English Canada, pushed back against core policies championed by Progressive Conservative majorities in the years 1984–1993.  Conservative minority governments since 2006 have moved crucial equality markers backward, but in a deliberately under-the-radar manner.  This erosion is likely to continue, even with a social democratic Official Opposition for the first time in Canadian history.