But women do have to fight against odds to survive. It is not simply in their own minds that their voices are powerless and that they fail to receive cooperation. Men do not just "seem bigger," they often are and they exercise their right to a voice by physically silencing women who have been trained to believe men have that right. The type of account Belenky et al. give does not show us that the women are silenced, unheard and trained to believe that their smallest voice is too loud. Instead it leads us to blame women for their "silence" and to assume that illiterate women, particularly those who live in the face of male violence, need to be taught to speak, when what is needed is that men who silence women need to listen.

Kazemak refers to work such as this one by Belenky et al. to argue that by failing to study the relationship between women and literacy, scholars have given only a partial account of adult literacy. She says the absence of such study suggests:

...at the best a naivete or ignorance on our part as literacy scholars and, at the worst, a conscious or unconscious disdain for the specific literacy needs of women within a patriarchal society. This omission of information on the functions, uses, and needs of literacy among women makes any theoretical or practical discussion of adult literacy incomplete, if not suspect (p. 23).

I want to agree with her that the omission of studies of women is crucial, but suggest that we need studies which start from the standpoint of the women who are labelled "illiterate" or "silent", not studies which continue to leave the women themselves silent and unheard.

References

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R. & Tarule, J.M. (1986). Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind. New York: Basic Books.

Bhasin, K. (1984). "The Why and How of Literacy for Women: Some Thoughts in the Indian Context", Convergence. 17 (4), 1984, 37-43.

Calamai, P. (1987b). "Women More Literate than Men." In Southam Newspaper Group. (1987). Broken Words: Why Five Million Canadians Are Illiterate [the Southam Literacy Report] (pp. 29- 30). Toronto.

Callaway, H. (1981). "Women's Perspectives: Research as Revision. "In P. Reagan and J. Rowen (eds.), Human inquiry: A Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research (pp,457-471). London: John Wiley & Sons.

De Coito, P. (1984). Women and Adult Basic Education in Canada: An Exploratory Study. Toronto: CCLOW.

Ellis, P. (1984). "Women, Adult Education and Literacy: A Caribbean Perspective." Convergence, 17 (4), 44-53.

Fingeret, A. (1984). Adult Literacy Education: Current and Future Directions. Columbus, OH: ERIC. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 246 308). .

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hale, S.M. (1986). "Education for Silence: Ideological Practices in Adult Education for Women in rural North India." Presented at Comparative and International Education Society Meetings, Literacy Panel, Toronto, March 13. (Drawn from S. Hale, "The Elusive Promise: The Struggle of Female Development Workers in Rural North India." Montreal: McGill Center for Developing Area Studies.)

Junge, B.J. & Tegegne, D. (1985). "The - Effects of Liberation from Illiteracy on t the Lives of 31 Women: A Case Study." Journal of Reading, 28, 606-613.

Kazemak, F.E. (1988). "Women and ; Adult Literacy: Considering the Other Half of the House." Lifelong Learning: An Omnibus of Practice and Research, 11 (4), p 23, 24 & 15.

MacKeracher, D. et al. (n.d.) Adult Basic Education for Women: A Model for Policy Development. Toronto: Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women.

MacKeracher, D. (1987). "Women and Basic Education." In J. Draper and M. Taylor (eds.), Adult Basic Education: A Field of Practice. Manuscript submitted for publication.

McCaffery, J. (1985). "Women in Literacy and Adult Basic Education: Barriers to Access." In M. Hughes & M. Kennedy (eds.), New Futures. Changing Women's Education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Ramdas, L. (1985). "Illiteracy, Women and Development" Adult Education and Development, 24, 95-105.

Rockhill, K. (1987a). "Gender, Language and the Politics of Literacy." British Journal of Sociology, 8,(2), 153-167.

Rockhill, K. (1987b). "Literacy as Threat/ Desire: Longing to be SOMEBODY." In J. Gaskell & A. McLaren (eds.), Women and Education: A Canadian Perspective (pp.315-331). Calgary: Detselig.

Solity, J. (1986). "Women's Literacy." RaPal Research and Practice in Adult Literacy, 1, 4-5.

Thompson, J.L. (1983a). Learning Liberation: Women's Response to Men's Education. London: Croom Helm.

Thompson, J.L. (1983b). "Women and Adult Education." In M. Tight (ed.), Education for Adults. Vol. II: Educational Opportunities for Adult Education (pp. 145-158). London: Croom Helm.

Some Additional Reading on Women, Literacy and Training.

Breault, L. (1986). "Turning a Male Training Model into a Feminist One: Canadian Jobs Strategy Re-entry." Women's Education des femmes, 5 (2), 14-17.

Dance, T. and Witter, S. (1988). "The Privatization of Training: Women Pay the Cost" Women's Education des femmes, 6 (1),8-14.

Gaskell, J. (1987a). "Course Enrollment in the High School: The Perspective of Working Class Females." In J. Gaskell and A. McLaren (eds.), Women and Education: A Canadian Perspective (pp. 151-170). Calgary: Detselig.

Gaskell, J. (1987b). "Gender and Skill." In D. Livingstone, ed., Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Power (pp. 137- 153). Toronto: Garamond.

Horsman, J.M. (1988). "Something in My Mind Besides the Everyday: Il/literacy in Women's Lives in a Nova Scotian County." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto.

Horsman, J .M. (1987). "From the Learners' Voice: Women's Experience of Il/literacy." In J. Draper and M. Taylor (eds.), Adult Basic Education: A Field of Practice. Manuscript submitted for publication.