The women's movement in the 1970s and 1980s was a global phenomenon that achieved significant educational change. More analysis of how it developed and had an impact on education can inform our understanding of the possibilities for change today. This paper explores how the women's movement changed schooling in Vancouver in the 1970s, using a framework based on the idea of building civic capacity. The movement arose from a global politics, coalesced locally around new ideas, and created new relationships and institutional forms that drove school reform. Although the particular institutional forms that were created did not last, the impact of changed ideas and a new politics of equity have persisted, albeit in contested forms. The metaphor of building civic capacity for educational change is useful in focusing attention on ideas and institutions, but must be understood as contingent, shifting and fragile.