Throughout the research process, women continued to talk about the positive experiences they have had or the impact woman-positive activities had on their program.

[How would this meeting be different if we had men in it?]

• I think it would be extremely different! I think that a lot of us would shut up! I don't think we would be as open as we are in talking about...the things we've been talking about... because they're men.
• Maybe because you start to feel like they might not understand. It's like sometimes you're talking about certain things you just don't want to talk to men about. Because sometimes women just like to talk among themselves. I'm sure men are the same way. Because they feel sort of self conscious too in opening up there problems. They talk to other guys all the time. Or to their friends.
• Well usually when you're in a group discussion women are more apt to be more open I think it's just because the way you feel, you feel a bit more uptight maybe...You talk about how they're going to react... I feel a lot better in all-women groups just because you think well, she understands how I feel about it, just because she is a woman. Because she's got the same problems maybe. Just even though she's a different kind of person. You think, she knows how you feel. It's just easier talking. You feel more comfortable because they're the same as you.
• I like it better in a mixed group, really...Sometimes these men, it's good for them to know our problems. It's nice to be able to understand men, to tell them how you feel. Sometimes I think there's not enough communication between people. They do have all the same needs and wants. They do have all the same problems really.

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• I think to some extent there is a lot of discussion around [differences men and women] here among the staff. And I've wondered whether it came from the fact that a women's group was run here or maybe it always was. But I also heard [women students] remembering things that came from the women's group. Or understandings that happened. Like I think that the whole thing around trying to get a childcare fund really came or gelled from the women's group. I mean it may have been talked and thought about before but I think that there, that there were actions actually taken about it. And I really feel like that women's group affected how we planned [another group]. I feel that. I feel that people hark back to it.

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• Once [immigrant women re-entry programs] get going they just have a wonderful time and they really just make all kinds of progress. Just incredible. And they're so happy and they're so together. And I think part of it is because it happens to be a group of women that relate really well together. Better than a group of men, I would say, better than a co-ed group.

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• The women's program changed the program and me and everybody here on how we work with women. [Because?] Because we talked about it. And we were forced to look at things that we didn't have to look at, in order to make it accessible to women.

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• We had a group [of Native students] who had come through from literacy to grade ten, and then through advanced level, all together as a group. What happened was there was this chemistry that took place within that group: They were very articulate, they were very clearly directed... And what they did is they made changes in the whole college because they said these are the problems that we are facing as a specific group... So I see that when we get a group that's going to be all-women that we're going to have that same kind of impact.

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