Taking space for
woman-positive literacy work

Anne Moore
Action Read, Guelph, ON

I am a feminist who has worked for seven years in community-based literacy programs in southern Ontario. Last year I was hired to focus specifically on women, a first for me. I started the women's group for Action Read in March 1991. Its purpose was to create a women's group to focus on writing and to develop group skills among the women. I feel extremely lucky to be doing this work. What I did not expect was to see the resistance to women's programming. To my surprise I felt this resistance everywhere, including within myself.

In November, I became involved in an action research project with the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW), which gave me the time to document my experiences, to reflect on them and to share my reflections with women from eleven other programs across Canada. Since becoming involved in this project, two things have become strikingly clear. Woman-positive programming is essential in literacy programs. Women literacy workers doing this woman-specific programming need to be supported in their work by concrete structures and by opportunities to reflect with other women.

By beginning a dialogue with other women doing the same kinds of work I hope that I can lessen some of the isolation I feel in my work. This is a scary thing to do. The ideas in this paper are sometimes contradictory. I was reminded again while writing this of how complex women's experiences are and how we try to work with all these levels of complexity at once in literacy work.

After just a couple of months, my CCLOW journal entries started to alarm me. I saw myself being pulled between my job and my personal needs and often feeling snagged in between the two. I was trying to meet everyone's needs at once - and not meeting anyone's, especially my own. I began to ask questions. Why do I devalue my work? Why aren't there enough resources to do my work? Why don't I demand more? What was it I was trying to do and for whom? Why do I always underestimate the needs of women: my own, the group's and the staff's?

When I started the group for Action Read, my first challenge was to find a suitable location for the women's group. At the time, Action Read was on the fourth floor of a building where the elevator man" was known to be abusive, especially to women who were poor. Complaints were made but nothing changed. I had no choice but to look for alternate space. With very little money, it was difficult to find a place.

I finally heard of a community room in the basement of a, housing complex for women. At this point Action Read moved to a large room in a busy, downtown storefront location. The group and the staff thought we should move to this new space even though it had no private area or effective sound barriers. Little did we know what effect our presence would have on the rest of the program. That is where my story begins.