Women are involved in adult literacy and basic education as paid staff as well as students. We make up the vast majority of adult literacy and basic education program workers. Like many other direct-service providers in female job ghettos, our work is devalued in terms of salary, working conditions, and respect. We often do administrative and counselling work as well as instruction, although these skills are not acknowledged or rewarded. Students, practitioners, program administrators, board members, funding agencies, bureaucrats, and politicians must all take responsibility for understanding the consequences of this devaluation in the context of the rhetoric surrounding the importance of adult literacy and basic education. We must all advocate for an in-depth qualitative as well as quantitative investigation of the current working conditions of program practitioners, including the possibilities of developing minimum standards and wage levels, as well as a practitioners' union. Affirmative action hiring policies should be implemented in programs, agencies, training institutions, and government departments. This is particularly important wherever women are under-represented in program administration or policy management positions, and wherever the paid staff and volunteers of a program do not represent the students or community in terms of sex, race, or culture. Recommendation: Program planning, implementation, and evaluation must take place in a context that recognizes the reality of women's lives within the particular program and community. Programs must take the responsibility of providing a safe environment in which women can learn. There can be no excuse for allowing any woman to be treated as a second-class student, worker, or volunteer. Staff, students, and volunteers must be willing to deal with difficult issues, issues such as violence against women and childcare, that directly affect women's equitable access to education. There is always something that can be done. If nothing else, those involved in a program can acknowledge that they do not have the resources to deal with particular issues. We can make the barriers visible, affirming women's experience and confirming our own inability or unwillingness to deal with these barriers.
All those involved in the field of adult literacy and basic education must understand that both violence and the threat of violence are very real barriers to women's education. Physical, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual abuse must be recognized as past, current, and future possibilities in all women's lives. |
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