Most of the students in this writing group were not born in Canada, and lose who were are not from the middle-class and have not had particularly good educational experiences. They do not name themselves as feminists. Therefore much of the feminist literature and thought that interests us does not speak to their needs or wants. While we talk about feminism as a sisterhood and we want to include all women in this sisterhood, differences in class, culture, economic and life circumstances cannot be ignored. How we, the more privileged women, define feminism excludes many women in literacy classes. Liz Stanley and Sue Wise 1990) also recognize this:

A defining assumption of feminism is that 'woman' is a necessary and valid category because all women share, by virtue of being women, a set of common experiences. These shared experiences derive, not causally from supposed 'biological facts' but women's common experience of oppression. That is, 'woman' is a socially and politically constructed category, the ontological basis of which lies in a set of experiences rooted in the material world.

However, to say that women share 'experiences of oppression' is not to say that we share the same experiences. The social contexts within which different kinds of women live, work, struggle and make sense of their lives differ widely across the world and between different groupings of women. We argue that the experience of 'women' is analogically fractured and complex because we do not all share one single and unseamed material reality. We also suggest that the category 'woman' used in academic feminist writing then (and, to an extent, now) actually reflected the experiences and analysis of white, middle-class, heterosexual, First World, women only, yet treated these as universals. (pp. 21-22)

While we are struggling to incorporate a feminist perspective into our literacy :lasses, we want to remain sensitive to the fact that our experiences are not the same as our students' and that we must approach this carefully. As Magda Lewis (1992) states,

"We must choose words carefully and negotiate our analyses with the women students in ways that will not turn them away from the knowledge they carry in their experiences. "( p.175 )

As well, in any classroom there is a power imbalance. The teacher holds more power than the students. This is especially true in classes such as ours where many students from countries other than Canada hold the teacher and her opinions in high esteem. How then can a true dialogue on controversial issues take place?

This issue is referred to in one of our journal entries. The students were writing a covering letter for a resume and the issues of employers asking for age and marital status came up: