I've seen too many of the people fighting with this or that one. They couldn't even go to the mailbox because they'd be talking about them and they'd be mad at them. They'd say, "Did you hear what she said?" It was awful. At least when I go down to the bottom of the hill people will wave to me. They don't say. "That [Jean] said this." That's the way I like it; stay out of their lives they stay out of mine.

Some women were also suspicious of their families. Women, brought up by mothers who hurt them, found it hard to trust other women. Many felt that their loneliness led them to become depressed, or as the women described it, have trouble with their "nerves."

It is not uncommon for women to be uprooted and relocated to be near their husband's job. Those women who had made friends lost touch with them when they moved into outlying places with their husbands. Some men increase women's isolation by discouraging them from leaving the house or meeting alone.

Further, when women divorced partners and moved again they sometimes lost any friends they had managed to find during that period. They are cut off from their old friends because of the belief that women alone are a threat, likely to steal another woman's husband. As Alice described:

Where I used to live there was about twelve families and all us girls would go back and forth for coffee. We were friends. When you become a divorced person you don't have that anymore, because somehow they seem to think you're not attached to any man anymore, so you might grab theirs.

Other than an occasional bingo game or church group, women lack a social place where they can go without a man. They want somewhere where they can feel comfortable alone, a place to chat with other women. They spoke about being hassled when they went to the tavern even when in a group:

I don't know, I must have a sign on me I'm not attached, try to pick me up. I don't know, you get hit on so much and propositioned.

Roberts (1976) has identified that when women are not with a partner, are seen as no man's property, therefore as "every man's prey" (p. 16). Neighbours accuse women of not caring for their children adequately when they go to the tavern. So, unlike men, women have nowhere to drop in and meet people:

There isn't a place where it's just a drop in for women like the tavern is for men. They can drop in for a cold beer on the way home from work. Can we do that? Talk about discrimination.

Jane explained:

I don't drink or smoke or anything so there's not many places to go if you don't do those [things].

Many programs, program workers and funders, saw time spent on social aspects as irrelevant, and an inappropriate use of time in a literacy or training program. Workers spoke of the need to curtail the chat and get down to work, and spoke disparagingly of those participants whom they felt were only in the program for a social time. But participants saw this chance to mix with other women as fundamental. It reduced their isolation and also made it easier to relax and seek help without embarrassment and so enhanced their learning. They were glad to get out of the house and to talk to other women or simply to get to know the woman who was their tutor so that she became a friend. Those who were in groups spoke of the group becoming like one big family. They enjoyed working together and helping each other, and they saw the opportunity to discover that their problems were experienced also by other women as particularly important.

Participating in the literacy program was a way of filling the time. Betty described saving her homework for that purpose:

I could have sat right down and did it all and had nothing to do for the rest of the time until next Thursday. Well I leave it, or I'll do it when I get bored, which is very often.

Mary said she would participate in the literacy program to give her something to do:

Well I said, it might give me something to do to occupy some time, I guess.

However, school work is not just a way of filling time. The social interaction is key for many women. Mary enjoyed the personal exchange with a woman about her own age. She did not think she would have the same experience with a man because the social dimension would have been different:

If it was a man that was talking about it with me, I would be uncomfortable. I don't think I would be able to do it.

When I asked what she got out of the lesson she told me how important it was "to have someone to chat with, to talk to." Her tutor comes twice a week and they do a lesson from the Laubach text and then they have tea and talk. The tutoring lesson does not however exhaust her need for social contact. I asked her if she would have preferred to do something that got her out of the house and meeting people and she simply said she would have liked to do something like that too.