The social needs of women, perhaps specifically undereducated women, pose questions for literacy programs. Our literacy program has always placed a big emphasis on its social environment. There is a comfortable, friendly atmosphere - people working in small groups, helping each other, debating issues, planning activities, creating stories, getting ready for job searches, rehearsing for performances, and quietly studying. Friendships blossom, but the groups of six or seven people predetermine these pairings.

We ask that people commit to the small groups. And all of the groups are a mix of men and women, young and older people side by side. It is a hard question, but are our women learners getting the support here that truly addresses their needs? What will a woman's group or a woman's program do for them that is different?

There was a lot to think about. The cohesion of a program like ours, based as it is upon the ideals of equality and social empowerment, depends also upon cooperation and collaborative learning. My dawning awareness of women's isolation from each other confounded me. I expected them to feel excluded from mainstream social and economic power bases and all the male-dominated institutions. I knew they were left out of decisions involving their children and their own bodies. I had never thought of them as cut off from each other like separated siblings of a huge female family.

As we continued meeting, the painful sadness of this idea was often subsumed by the altogether delightful and peaceful joy we found. Talking about our experiences, our daily concerns, was a way of being happy, even if the particular situation we were discussing was sorrowful. I couldn't help thinking of all those allusions, made by men in literature over the centuries, to women's so-called innate sadness. The sorrowing woman, not quite tragic, but deeply pained, was understood by the male-writers as naturally sad because female.

Yes, it is true, I thought. Women are more sad than mad, and they laugh to keep going. But the sadness is caused by oppression.

Enjoying the simple gifts of openness and a remarkable absence of tension seems to contradict an understanding of "feminism" as concerned with BIG agendas

Something else was happening, in addition to the delights of companionship and bonding. There was the easy communication of ideas. And the flow of our conversations frequently led to satisfying, quiet, communal nods of agreement - a sort of shared wisdom.

"When he's lost something in the house, he says he wants me to help him find it. When I go to where I think it will be and find it, he says "How do you do that?" Everyone smiles. Yes, we know.