Pat MacNeil (Beat the Street) talked about the importance of having a choice about using the terms "feminist" or "woman-positive." She saw "woman-positive" as a way to include women whose everyday lives are full of behaviour she would call feminist.

I think that there are lots of women who speak up for women, for their rights and for the rights of other women, and help them. There are women who live in Ontario Housing Projects who take in every woman who's being abused. They hide them and help them and they would never identify themselves as feminist. Woman-positive they could relate to.

At the same time, she added that women should not be afraid to use the word "feminist" - it is an important political tool. Kate Nonesuch (Malaspina College) talked about the way it can identify allies.

I find "feminist" a useful label to put on myself. If I'm in a whole crowd of women that I don't know very well, discussing an issue in education, for example, and I mention the word "feminist," the response I get gives me some kind of identification of who's on my side on that issue. . . .

These days, in the backlash against feminism, I find it even more useful to notice, among white women, who is willing to say she's a feminist. I'm talking here about women who work in institutions - government and education mainly. Women who are actively feminist in those places pay for it personally and in their career paths. When I am lobbying for something for women, I feel that such a woman is a stronger ally than someone who does not identify as a feminist. I also pay attention when someone says she no longer identifies as a feminist in solidarity with women who identify feminism with white, middle class women.

At this point we had completed the second national workshop, the second program visits, and the second interviews. We had clearly moved from description and action into discussion and documentation. Women had talked about their experiences with their partners and other participants in their programs. Most had consistently written reflective journals and responded to transcriptions from their interviews. They had read other women's written material and participated in intense discussions with those who had experiences both similar to and very different from their own. We were ready to work through an analysis that began with our own experiences and extended to incorporate the experiences of other women in the project.