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When women begin to
participate in woman-positive activities within their programs they talk of
having to face the tensions between theory and practice.
- We had one student that we asked to leave because of his
attitude towards women. It was quite offensive. And he seemed to be somewhat of
a leader and a mouthy person in the group. And we thought this is not good. We
don't want women who come into the program to feel this is the class attitude.
We recommended another program to him ...
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- Part of the reason why you don't get many literacy programs
for women is that this is “community” and so it changes the face of
things. Also, [in “community”] there is not a clear understanding or
recognition of the needs of women.
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- I think women staff, women working in literacy programs,
front-line deliverers, would probably have as much to say... How do their
issues get sorted? And where do they go? Students can come to you. Where does
the staff go? There is no forum. We don't make it a priority You don't even
want to recognize that it is not a priority at your workplace. And you know
that it isn't. And where do you go to have it addressed?
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- It just so happened that women gravitated [to the program].
It wasn't designed just as a women's program, although clearly, in the hearts
of some of the people there, it might have been just as interesting, perhaps
more interesting, if it had just stuck with women. But, then it wouldn't have
become a community program.
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- Those of us who would deal with the minute-to-minuteness of
[women-only classes] are the most divided on it. And those of us who would deal
with the minute-to-minuteness of it are also the most afraid of the backlash
because bureaucrats and support staff are more allowed to kind of not have to
take a position but to seem to be supporting and working out. But if you say
you are going to teach an all-women class then that implies you have taken a
position and if you say you don't want to teach it, that implies your position,
and if you don't get to teach it, you've got to come to terms with what you do
get to teach ...
- It's the old business of when you take the women away,
what's left is the men.
- And in fact if you take away a core group of women, you're
probably leaving a small number of women with a large number of men. And what
does that mean-what are the implications of leaving the women behind who may
partly not be in that women-only class because they're too scared to be in that
class? And so you've taken the most scared women and left them with the large
number of men.
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- Which is part of how the institution is patriarchal. It's the
nature of the institution that's a problem. If all of the classes were as
woman-friendly as they are man-friendly, it wouldn't matter who got left
behind. But they aren't. That proves that they aren't. What would you care who
was left behind if all of the classes were as equally woman- friendly?
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- The staff all kind of had a discussion about [possible
sexual assault incident]. And we realized that he was preventing her, and then
subsequent women-I mean we were trying to be learner-centred in giving this guy
literacy, but felt that he was a barrier to women in the program. And see, he
was really smart. It was really hard to pin him down between his rights as an
individual and his-because we're not detectives and we're not lawyers-his
rights as an individual and his freedom. Because we say literacy is a right-his
right to have literacy. But we always would go in favour of the women, saying
that because there had been other barriers in people's lives, this was one more
barrier. I mean you get in and then you get harassed.
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