I finally isolated two threads of responses to my talk about women's experience. These threads seemed to be entwined with two recurring phrases: "What about the men?" and "But this program is learner-centred/This program is community-based." It was only when I started to put these phrases into context that I was able to begin the process of putting together the different pieces of what was happening. Here is part of that process:

• A woman student in a community-based program told me they used to have a women's group in her program and it was wonderful. This year they have a family literacy group. She's not sure why they changed the group from women to family, but she thinks it must be because the men couldn't come to the women's program and people didn't think that was fair.
  
  
• Another woman, a strongly feminist and experienced instructor, told me about a women-only class that was held where she worked several years ago. "[The women-only class] turned into a consciousness-raising group," she said. " A really tight little group of women who gave each other support about all kinds of stuff. And they did a whole lot of literacy work around that. It worked beautifully in terms of them using reading and writing skills to tackle their problems, as well as doing some straight academic work." (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 38)

Two things happened with this class. First, nobody wanted to work with the men that were left after the women were taken out. The men's group was seen as impossible to teach effectively. They seemed to be unsociable, unmotivated, unruly. It would have taken a great deal of work on materials and group process to get the men together - and the male instructor wasn't willing to take that work on. Second, the instructor teaching the women's group became uncomfortable with her lack of control over the class and the curriculum. She couldn't integrate the women's active participation into her context of "teaching reading and writing."

So, because nobody wanted to work with the men as they were, because no one wanted to spend time developing effective men's curriculum and process, because the instructor found it difficult to be open to the women's experience, and because there was no time for any of the staff to actually sit down, talk, and analyze the situation - they stopped having a women's class.

• Another woman literacy worker said: "The sub text to these conversations is women want a women-only support group because they need a safe space. Men don't support each other, so a men-only support group is a contradiction. Women support men. So a mixed group is a men's support group." (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 41)