2-1 What do we do when we begin to talk among ourselves as “women”

A group of nine women students from a community college on the west coast is sitting around a table with one of their instructors and myself. We have agreed to meet for the next three days from 10:15 to 12:15. The sun is coming in through a wall of windows as we head into the last half hour of discussion for this first day. Already, we've gone round the table with questions like-

• How did you know there were classes here at this campus?
• What kind of changes did you have to make in your life in order to come?
• Did anyone help you make some of these changes?
• What surprised you about the classes?

Now an instructor, who is facilitating the group, talks a bit more about how I have come to find out about women's experience with upgrading programs. She asks us to think about how their experience, as women, might be different from the experience of the men who are at the college. It is clearly a difficult question and there is not a lot of response. Finally, one of the women says, "How would we know the difference?" Other women laughed in relief as they reflected back the statements, "We haven't been men. We don't know what their experience is!" Also, some words and body language said, "We haven't thought of ourselves as women here, different from the men."

Towards the end of the second day, the instructor asks the question:

• Do you think this group would be different if there were men here?

There is much less hesitation around this question-partly because it is a more concrete question and partly because we've discussed being women for two days now. We feel free to agree and disagree with each other-despite our differences in age, race, culture and formal education.