We developed these recommendations for organizations and networks involved in adult literacy and basic education, for politicians, policy makers, program administrators, paid staff and volunteers, students. At the centre of these recommendations is our belief that positive change in the development of adult literacy policies, programs, and practice occurs most effectively when all participants in a program, all members of a community, all peoples in a nation are equitably involved in decision-making.

This means that all of us have both an individual and collective responsibility to give space, time, and resources to those who have been marginalized where we work and live. We must use whatever authority we have to resist this marginalization and to facilitate the development of voices that have been silenced in the past.

We must be willing to recognize and confront in whatever ways we can the sexism, racism, class bias, homophobia, and ablism that exists at our workplaces and in our communities We must recognize the violence that is done to people when they are isolated and dominated through physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual abuse. And we must begin with ourselves, with our own programs, in our own communities, as members of organizations, coalitions, and networks, as citizens who have the democratic right to hold our government accountable for its policies.

At the same time, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that change will come easily. We face resistance whenever we propose changes that may limit the privilege of those who are unable or unwilling to recognize injustice and then do something about it.

Recommendation:
Getting women, in all our dimensions, on the agenda

• Responsibility for acknowledging sex/gender as one of the issues

Everyone involved in the field of adult literacy and basic education - students, volunteers, paid practitioners, administrators, advocates, bureaucrats, and politicians -must take responsibility for putting women's experience on the agenda in terms of program development and evaluation, provision of support services, professional education and development, coalition building, policy analysis, and government lobbying.

When we advocate for women's experiences as legitimate agenda items in the field of adult literacy and basic education, we must also recognize that experiences based on race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and so on are legitimate agenda items. We must recognize that by raising sex/gender as an issue, we open the way for other dimensions of women's experience to be heard - women's experience of racism, class bias, ablism, homophobia, and heterosexism. We also open the way for men's experiences of both privilege and oppression to become agenda items.