The women Betty-Ann met with in the following months clearly stated that they already knew what barriers women face when trying to access basic education. They did not want to study those barriers, they wanted to make some changes. They wanted to challenge the ways in which literacy programs ignore women's lives and needs. CCLOW published Betty-Ann's report in early 1991. Discovering the strength of our voices - Women and literacy-Program (Lloyd, 1991) outlined the issues raised by women and invited literacy programs across Canada to participate in the next phase of the research. The National Literacy Secretariat, Human Resources Development, accepted the proposal that came out of this documentation and funded the long-term, national, program-based research that became phase two. Betty-Ann continued as coordinating researcher and Frances Ennis joined her after the first workshop as a second coordinating researcher.

When developing the phase two project proposal, Betty-Ann began with CCLOW's expectation that the research would be feminist and, at some level, participatory. Based on the phase one analysis, it would also be based in a variety of programs and include an activity that some women in each program identified , as woman-positive. The methodological framework for this kind of work can be found in the tradition of qualitative research as it has been adapted and extended by feminist researchers, community activists, and theorists. Betty-Ann's own work in the area of the social organization of knowledge, experiential learning theory, feminism, postmodernism, and the politics of difference added its own influence.

The methodology and design provided ways for women who participated in the day-to-day research to influence the development of the process. The original proposal provided an overall focus, a timeline, an allocation of resources, and a framework of events such as workshops and visits to each program. However, the program women had control over what happened in their woman-positive activities. They used that experience to direct both the process and the content of the workshops, and the documentation.

The project adopted a definition of action research developed by the Women's Research Centre in Vancouver:

The systematic collection and analysis of information for the purposes of informing political action and social change. (Barnsley & Ellis, 1992, p.9)

All three aspects of this definition - the systematic collection of information, its analysis, and its use for informing political action and social change - remained central throughout the research process.

The design also reflected a feminist perspective where women begin in their everyday worlds, moving out of that particular perspective into an investigation of how social relations are set up within our society and within adult literacy programs. An understanding of these social relations includes a recognition of how we are all embedded in our historical location and how we are all socially organized by such things as class, race, gender, age, sexuality, abilities, citizenship status. It also includes a consideration of several principles of feminist research as outlined by Liz Stanley (1990).