That they talked so much about their feelings of frustration meant that they wanted change. I found myself trying to understand more. I wondered why they felt silenced in social settings while men could "talk to each other in mixed company." I wrote:

At some sort of new social grouping where most of the couples don't know each other, the men have no trouble relating to each other (the women learners say) but women don't know how to converse with other women beyond a polite hello, how are you. . . then there's nothing to say.

I went on:

Does this mean that women are so stifled in social settings they (find themselves) physically unable to speak? Or that they are (feel) drastically alienated from members of their own sex? Or that they are so intent upon what their men are doing and saying that they can't help but concentrate on the conversation and interaction of the males?

Understanding the women's group as "sacred" space
points to the ways in which the rest of the program
was somehow less satisfying for women

Keeping a journal enabled me to reflect seriously on what the group was doing. It meant that I was discovering layers of meaning, but not necessarily answers. I also discovered important implications for the program as a whole. For example, I found that women learners were not writing about the women's group when they were in their regular classes. After we had the women's group, students would go back to their group rooms, looking "satisfied," as one of the staff said. But they wrote about other things, as if the women's group was something very private. Another staff sensed that one learner seemed to want to protect the group. Not its members, but the thing itself in some way. "It's very special to her, I get the feeling it's a little bit sacred."

This lack of writing about the group could have been raised with the women, but I decided I didn't want to ask directly whether they had thought about writing about the group. This is the way Mary and I proceeded all along. We stayed away from asking leading questions of the women learners. We didn't want to cause things to happen. We watched the women and ourselves, as a group, unfold like a flower opening. This was our best way to explore.

In a similar way, in one group session we just allowed the conversation to find its own course and thus avoided having to ask a research question: "What did we get out of the group?" All it took was for somebody to say how good the group was for her and another to say how much enjoyment she was experiencing. Suddenly, we were talking about how happy we all felt at that moment. We knew we wanted to keep meeting and we knew we wanted other women to know about us.