I found your self-criticism made me acknowledge my own silence around feminism in the literacy program. I think I used to consider it my bias. I first felt permission to explore issues of how to make a program more anti-racist and anti-ablist, and then could see that in the same vein to make a place that did not silence, exclude, or feel unsafe to anyone it must also be anti-sexist. (Although I found that once I began to read the challenges to the white, middle-class, western bias of much feminism I could see more the intertwining of issues of racism, ablism, heterosexism within feminism.) I have often wondered about why feminism felt hard to bring in.

Is it because as a literacy worker I was used to championing other people's causes but not so clear that feminism was relevant to working class women? Was I concerned that it was like bringing in my religion (as one male literacy worker once said to me - women shouldn't teach feminism and he wouldn't teach his religion)? You too seem to puzzle what makes us need permission. I think it is an important question for us all to grapple with.

You also remind us how incredibly important reflection is. For that too in some ways we seem to need permission or at least just a little structuring. I was struck by the fact that even though you are both friends and colleagues you had not previously been doing the sort of reflection you did during this project. I wonder whether you will continue to keep journals and have these incredibly rich reflective conversations together once the project is over? I certainly know how hard it is to find the time, and was again aware of the parallel.

When I led a women's group I only reflected with others on the staff when I was feeling unhappy about how the group was working, and it felt a bit of an admission of failure to bring my questions to a collective meeting. Later, I was writing curriculum with one of those colleagues and we were continually engaged in discussions together and I could see how much richer my work with the women's group would have been had I been talking to her then. So your writing reminds me of the value of reflection and challenges us all to find ways to structure critical, creative reflection in to all our work, in spite of the degree of overwork in our programs.

You raise many more interesting questions which I cannot take up in detail. I think a crucial area to reflect on is the whole question of how we should bring in our feminism. That of course ties in to those questions you raise of the power difference between the teacher and learners (made even sharper if we are white and middle-class working with poor and/or immigrant or learners of colour). I feel we have been quite blocked on these questions by some interpretations of the learner-centred approach, which have led us, in our attempt to respond to learners' needs, to ignore how unlikely it is that learners can say they value and want to learn things which have been omitted or put down in mainstream society and media.

I do not think we can expect learners to say they want to learn Black history or Feminism unless we tell them more about what is possible for them to work on. I also think we have felt we have to leave ourselves out to be learner-centred. I think we have to learn how to put ourselves into the mix in such a way that learners can disagree with our views. I want to learn how to name my own perspectives, and open up challenging discussion, without silencing others. I think to do that we do have to be careful not to suggest that our feminism gives us the right answers.