Mary and Donna Lynn felt particularly frightened that they seemed to be expected to confess doubts about their male colleagues. They firmly rejected any notion of their male team members taking advantage of them, or working less and taking the glory, or undermining women in some other way. In so doing they perceived that they were regarded as dangerously naive or as political traitors.

I spent a lot of time listening to them and talking it over. In my journal, I reflected on what it might mean:

My best inspiration [to finding an answer] comes from my daughter who, amongst her peers in graduate school, counts more women of her age who are afraid of the 'F' word [feminist]. She said "They freeze - they ; completely reject further conversation - they can't hear beyond their fear : - they [become] powerless."

The question became: How to move on? I had two women left in limbo by their own paralysis and I was angry with women I hadn't even met. Rather hesitantly, I described the problem to Betty-Ann Lloyd, the research coordinator. Our discussion was a good one, and helpful. We realized we were dealing with big differences among women. We talked about the difficulty of reconciling agendas and the sometimes seemingly contradictory goals of woman-positive and feminist ideologies.

Betty-Ann suggested I call Jenny Horsman, a member of the research advisory committee who had first mentioned the project to me. When I called Jenny, I felt unsure of how to deal with my concerns, although I thought she would be able to see the problem clearly. I was in a dilemma and found it difficult to bring my uncertainty into focus. After a long talk with Jenny, I found I could figure things out again. Later I became suddenly exhilarated. I expressed it this way:

When we were floundering around, it was woman-positive support [from CCLOW] that got us where we are. . . . It was extremely helpful and open- ended. . . and therefore [I felt] liberated to do it. I felt empowered :

This made sense of course. Our whole program ideology of personal empowerment translates into the actual, concrete support we give each other - the kind of non-directive, everyday counselling which helps you find the answer yourself. Betty-Ann and Jenny had both given me the support I needed to find the way to woman-positive support.

The answer, in our case, was to explore the meaning of woman-positive in a way that best suited our participants, our women. Donna Lynn withdrew from the project, I decided to take her place, and Mary, one of our program's counsellors, continued on with me. We decided one way of doing this would be to throw the idea out to see who would be interested in talking about what we might do as a woman-positive activity. Another way would be to suggest to a few women - a cross-section of female learners - that they could meet as a group, as part of a project looking at women's lives and how they might be enhanced. We chose the latter route.