The bottom line for many of the women involved was that taking on any new activity means that time has to be taken from something else. Despite all attempts to ensure that women were not simply adding the research to their full-time work, the reality was that many women involved in literacy, particularly community-based literacy, never have the time they want or need to do their work.

• What did you think we meant by "woman-positive" when we first talked with you? What do you think it means now?

Most women said they were not sure what we meant by "woman-positive" when they first came into the research. During initial telephone conversations they learned that one of the research objectives was to discover how different women in different programs defined the concept of woman-positive for themselves. Occasionally, women would ask if there was a correct or incorrect way to be woman-positive. I would usually repeat something I had written in a paper delivered between the two phases.

While I may not believe that there is one "correct" concept of what it means to be woman-positive, I do believe that there is an "incorrect" way to approach the concept - one that puts itself forward as universal, as crossing boundaries of sex, race, class, abilities, formal education, geographic location, immigration status, employment status, relationship to children, histories of emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual abuse. (Lloyd, 1991b)

My bottom line had been that an activity is woman-positive if it doesn't set out to fix the women involved but, instead, tries to fix the circumstances in which the women find themselves.

Most women assumed that a woman-positive activity would somehow be good for women. It might meet women's needs better than other activities in the program. It might change some aspect of the program that made it difficult for women to attend. It might provide a learning experience designed especially for the women involved.

A significant number of women originally believed that woman-positive meant women-only. Others believed that woman-positive meant the same as feminist. They thought those of us involved in planning the research had chosen something "softer" than the "f' word because we did not want to alienate women who might not identify as feminist.

Several women felt they were already doing work that was positive for women. They wanted to have that work either challenged or affirmed. Like everyone else, they were curious.

By the first interview, two or three months after the first workshop, women had found ways to talk about woman-positive work that made sense in their own context. For example, it became a very active term for Diane Eastman (Brandon Friendship Centre) who was working with women who had been sexually assaulted as children.