The formal agenda started Thursday afternoon as the facilitators asked us to explore some of our differences and commonalities as a way of getting to know each other. They focused on possible areas of sensitivity and tried to make visible the different concerns women might have at the beginning of such a project.

Most women brought photos, brochures, and publications from our their program.

Many women drew back from this process. We were a diverse group of women with varying degrees of experience with women-only conferences and workshops - from none at all to decades of working in local, regional, and national women's organizations. Some of us had never been away from families, friends, and communities before. Most, no matter what our past experience, wanted some time and space to get used to the setting and find out who we all were before we began to imagine how we might work together.

In retrospect, of course, that seems perfectly clear. As the workshop evaluations and later discussions indicated, most of the women who attended the first workshop wanted to go through a process of description before moving into reflection or analysis. They wanted to talk about their work and their lives in their communities before applying labels to themselves or their experience.

La Vera Schiele and Mary Anne Ellul look over the many learning materials women brought to display.

This became especially clear during an activity where we indicated on a continuum how comfortable or uncomfortable we felt identifying ourselves or our work as feminist. Although CCLOW is a feminist organization, neither the programs nor the women involved in this research were expected to identify as feminist. Some did, some didn't. Some thought it shouldn't make any difference, that it wasn't really important. Others thought it was central and might make all the difference in the world.

Most important, perhaps, we didn't really know each other well enough to understand what "feminist" might mean in this context. And it was time for bed. On top of everything else, many women felt exhausted from long hours of travel and jet lag. The next morning, we would begin again.