As others speak, they talk about the reasons they, or other women want to take part in woman-positive, women-only programs, groups or activities.

• Well, there's something I would like to say, but I think that it's way off. [Go for it.] Men have always had the power. And I guess, I guess, it's, well, for me, it's harder [to be in a group with men] because I'm more open. I think girls are more open than boys and get hurt more. And like, your friends and all, they get closed up, to a point, and then everybody just sticks to themselves and you can't really get in touch. Like you can't be friends with anybody because they're shut off to a point. [Kind of like protection.] Hmmhmm.

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• Women in a group tend to be more supportive of each other than men in a group. Men tend to be more distant even towards men. And you don't get that in a women's group and so maybe that's why a women's group seems to go further.

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• I think when they're entering, it is good for women to get together They get an opportunity to speak from their heart with like-minded others and sometimes speaking from the heart means resentment against men and ... the cares of the childrearing. The commonality of a shared experience really does help women very much into feeling like "This is a normal process and this is normality." Whereas I think when you get into a male/female group, it's not the same commonality so you find subjects aren't quite as intimate.

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• It's not always easy for women to be in classroom with men here. There are still roles and stereotypes of roles. There seemed to be ... women seemed to come together and stay together during coffee breaks. They didn't seem...The men went outside and had cigarettes. Sometimes the women did. But most of the time they were in separate groups. So it seemed to indicate to us that they would like a separate group.

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• There was a woman who at first didn't say a word to anyone in the group. And then it got to well, how do you feel your breasts for lumps. If you go to a doctor they give you a pamphlet, how to, but that doesn't tell you how to do it. You want a little tape recorder to tell you how to do it. Before you know where it is, she's absolute standing up, talking and going, well I have that, and the doctor told me this. Because she had already had it. Without knowing, without even thinking, she's standing demonstrating, teaching me, how to feel my lumps!

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• The conversations we used to have in the women's group would never ever come up around men. No way. It's not the sort of thing you talk about.

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• What happened was that the people would get together to discuss something and obviously [staff] would look into that. But when we met again the following week, perhaps you might be sitting having a cigarette and a coffee, and people would start to talk and would bring the conversation into the room about boyfriends, relationships, who we trust and who we don't. It was a little bit of everything.

  I think that was the fun part. It wasn't just about sex or children, it was what we wanted, how we felt, angry, frustrated, whatever... And I think it sort of, whatever you started talking about outside, you sort of bring it in. So whatever you talked about the week before, it sort of really never got followed up. What I felt in my mind, whatever you discussed in that day, you either have to close it or find the information out there or- because by the time you come back next week it's a different topic.

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• I would be scared to talk [if men in the same group]. I don't know why. That's all. It's hard for me..I'm shy from ladies too, not only from men.

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