 |
Canadian Congress
for Throughout the world there are many more illiterate women than men. However, in Canada, if we use completion of grade 9 as a benchmark (as suggested by UNESCO) to define functional illiteracy the numbers are about the same for both men and women: one in five people, or about five million Canadians are considered functionally illiterate. Despite the similarity in numbers, there are important differences in how women are affected by illiteracy. In this pamphlet the Canadian Congress for Learning
Opportunities for Women discusses some of these differences, and what literacy
programs are doing and can do for women. It's our hope that this pamphlet
encourages literacy workers to share experiences, new ideas and good learning
materials they have found. CCLOW is working on a catalogue of literacy
materials for women which will be available in the Spring of 1989, and we would
like to hear about other projects in this area. Our address is: |
| Why do women want to learn? Often women hope literacy will be a step to a better job, or to further training: “It's more or less to help me find a job, like a better paying job than $4 an hour.” Betsy. * Sometimes women want to be able to be more involved in their children's education: "It would help me with her a lot because if I could read stuff to her she'd understand it... We could go to the park, we could get books and sit outside and read." Susan.* Many women see reading as something meaningful which they are missing out on: “Reading I think has a lot to do with life. If you can read and understand what you're reading I think you can do a lot with it.” Susan. Acknowledgments: CCLOW thanks Jennifer Horsman, Tracy Westell at Parkdale Project READ. and Vivian Stollmeyer at East End Literacy, for their advice in producing this pamphlet. It was written by Tori Smith and produced with funding from Canada Employment and Immigration Challenge' 87 SEED Program and the Women's Bureau, Labour Canada. |
| Back | Contents | Next |