The Southam Literacy Survey shows women are more skilled readers." The article is addressed to "all men" and ends... "say while your wife is reading that book why not hide this [article]" (Calamai, 1987b). Although the male author writes jokingly, in the assumption that it is a problem for men that women are more "skilled readers", women's literacy is shown to be a threat to their power. Rockhill (1987a, 1987b) develops these themes much further in her articles based on a study with immigrant women in the United States. She concludes that literacy is lived in women's lives as threat and desire:

Women engage in literacy practices as part of the work of the family. When it becomes associated with education, literacy poses the potential of change and is experienced as both a threat and a desire. Thus the anomaly that literacy is women's work but not women's right (1987b, p. 330).

She argues that the assumption that literacy is "neutral" causes us to miss the charged dynamic around it for women, and urges the need to look at the "personal" to understand the gendered practices which reinforce the domination of women. In this way she suggests: "perhaps we can begin to find ways to address the contradictory constructions of women's subjectivities with respect to literacy/learning education" (1987a, p. 166).

The work by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986) studies women's ways of knowing. From their research with North American women, Belenky et al. identify five "epistemological perspectives from which women seem to know and view the world." In a recent article Kazemak (1988) argues that this work is important for literacy workers. Kazemak suggests that an understanding of these "stages" may be significant for understanding how women approach literacy and literacy instruction. She suggests that this understanding might lead to programs for women that are less "individually oriented" (Fingeret, 1984) and more in keeping with women's understanding of them selves as contextually-bound in caring relationships with others (Gilligan, 1982).

I want to draw attention to the image of "silence" that Belenky et al. chose for their "first stage" of knowing. While he authors do not claim that the perspectives they describe are stages - in fact they say: "we leave it to future work to determine whether these perspectives lave any stage-like qualities" - they do present them as a hierarchy, and speak of Women developing from one perspective to the next. They are also cautious about he meaning of the category "silence" because in their study few women fell into hat category. They speak of aiming to "share" their data rather than "prove" it.

Although they do not state that those who were placed in their first category which they call "silence" were illiterate, I hey do say that: "the silent women... had had little formal schooling or had found school to be a place of chronic failure". They argue that :

In order for reflection to occur, the oral and written forms of language must pass back and forth between persons who both speak and listen or read and write - sharing, expanding, and reflecting on each other's experiences. Such interchanges lead to ways of knowing that enable individuals to enter into the social and intellectual life of their community. Without them, individuals remain isolated from others; and without tools for representing their experiences, people also remain isolated from the self (p. 26).

They describe the "way of knowing" of women in their first category as "silent" and see this silence as resulting from isolation from the self. But the women they call "silent" are not silent They do speak, and they explain vividly that they have become fearful of speaking because the power of others has forced them to see their voice as a danger to them. They have suffered violence when they dared to speak. Belenky et al. speak of women who "worried that they would be punished just for using words - any words," but they do not explain that this silence may have been learned for the sake of safety because they have been punished for using any words. The suggestion that these women who are labeled "silent" lack voice because they are "isolated from the self" fails to convey the materiality of the unequal power dynamic within which many have lived.

One "silent" women speaks of being a loudmouth," perhaps picking up the discourse that has told her that as a woman , speak at all, is to speak out of turn. Belenky et al. depict the "silent" women ; fearful of the power of authorities:

In their experience authorities seldom tell you what they want you to do; they apparently expect you to know in advance. If authorities do tell you what is right. they never tell you why it is right. Authorities bellow but do not explain (p. 28).

But this leads them to depict the "silent" women: "like puppets moving with the jiggle of a thread. To hear is to obey." his image suggests that to see oneself as powerless in the face of authorities is to be "puppet," an image of being less than human.

Their depiction of the "silent" women does not allow the material circumstances of the women's lives to be considered, making it possible to see them as stupid because they simply fail to know and use the power of voice:

Because the women see themselves as slated to lose, they focus their efforts on assuring their own continued existence during a losing battle. They wage their struggle for survival without an awareness of the power inherent in their own minds and voice and without expectation of cooperation from others. It is a stacked game waged against men who seem to be bigger and better, men who think they have a right to be the winner to be right no matter what the circumstances (p. 30).