Second, I know you said woman-positive conditions should go on in all good classrooms, but as one who teaches in ABE, where the majority of students are women, it is still an incredibly difficult undertaking to support the women because they are women, to nurture their voices in a room where the few males (who also, of course, have real needs of their own) attempt to define their own voices in vigorous assertions which inevitably silence some of the women. More often than not, many of the group participants, both male and female, are openly hostile to discussion of women's issues.

What you have done, I think, is encouraging, because you have shown that one can, at least through the process you described, create some of the preconditions for feminist discussions.

Commentary IV

Betty-Ann Lloyd
Coordinating researcher, Women and literacy research project

As I read the final version of your article, I kept remembering the excitement and respect I felt during your very risky process of reflection, analysis, and documentation. When we first talked about the experiential learning cycle and the ways in which action research can bring about changes in women's understanding and practice, I wasn't sure how that would actually happen during this project. However, your work supported some of my most optimistic expectations and I am really grateful for the way in which you have made your own experience available to others through this article.

Your discussion of feminism and of woman-positive activity engaged me on several levels. On a personal level, I had to question the implications of what I mean when I talk about myself being feminist or being woman-positive and what I mean if I apply those labels to others. On a professional level, as a researcher, I felt challenged to better articulate my own agenda for what might happen in this project.

In the end, I think I disagree with the way in which you have currently resolved some of the questions you uncovered during the last year. As we have discussed, I interpret some of what you are saying as a distinction between feminism as content and woman-positive as attitude or process. I read you as arguing that

1. it is possible to do woman-positive activities by taking a positive attitude towards women and their lives, by providing space for women to talk about their lives in an environment that takes power relations into account, by offering different perspectives and options to women who seem to be restricted in their choices of how to understand and/ or live their lives; and

2. it is possible to do feminist activities only when you are woman-positive and when you put forward a content that articulates a particular understanding of women's position in our society, that places women's lives within a conceptual framework that has been developed as feminist.