Ontario

Ontario CCLOW members have had a very busy quarter working on a variety of national projects including the Adult Basic Education survey and the Conference, Educating For Change, scheduled for August. There are now three local CCLOW networks: Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa.

A group of members has organized a series of meetings with federal and provincial people to discuss the impact of the National Training Act on women's training programs based in the community. While the Act provides for non-profit groups to acquire federal funding for skill training programs, it is still very difficult to put this provision into operation. The third in this series of meetings was held in April at the Toronto Y.W.C.A. and the dialogue continues.

Toronto members held their first official Network meeting, chaired by Renate Krakauer reported on the proceedings of the Jobs for the Future regional meeting she attended on behalf of CCLOW. The meeting was sponsored by the Ontario Women's Directorate, and was successful in bringing together educators, business people and women's groups to discuss the impact of technology on women's training. The women's groups attending the meeting have continued to caucus with the encouragement and support of CCLOW. The group is preparing for their participation in the larger Jobs for the Future conference that will take place in the fall under the sponsorship of the Women's Directorate, Office of the Deputy Premier. Attendance at this conference will be limited to 300 participants who took part in the six regional meetings.

Ontario members are very busy preparing for the CCLOW Conference that will be held, August 19, 20 and 21 in Toronto. Meetings have been held with representatives from the regions, including Manitoba, P.E.I., Quebec and Toronto. The response to the call for papers has been overwhelming, and the conference is beginning to look very exciting. A great deal of creativity is going into the planning, with the intention of making this not only an intellectually stimulating event, but also one that will have an emphasis on fun and celebration. We are fortunate in having the assistance of our two enthusiastic conference staff, Eleanor Christopherson and Eileen Condon.

An important step, but more diversis needed.
The women's Review of Books, published monthly, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women Wellesley, Massachusetts 02181, $15.00 annual subscription.

by Janet Rogers

During the past few months, a new pleasure has come into my life the regular arrival of my copy of the Women's Review of Books (WRB). For the feminist who wants to keep in touch with important new work by American feminist intellectuals or who is interested in the current debates among American feminists, the WRB is a significant new source of information and ideas. It is an independent publication affiliated with the Wellesley College Center for Studies on Women (near Boston). The first issue appeared in October, 1983. The editorial board includes some well-known writers who have made major contributions to the literature of feminism in their own published work. Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice), Jean Baker Miller (Toward a New Psychology of Women), and Carolyn Heilbrun (Re-inventing Womanhood) are three of them all highly respected academics who have written books with popular impact.

The editorial policy stated on the masthead provides the following description of the intentions of the board:

We seek to represent the widest possible range of feminist perspectives both in the books reviewed and in the content of the reviews. We believe that no one of us, alone or in a group, can speak for feminism, or women, as such; all of our thinking and writing takes place in a specific political, social, ethnic and sexual context, and a responsible review periodical should reflect and further that diversity

These are praiseworthy goals. The women's movement needs forums such as the WRB to make women's work known and to allow for ongoing discussion. Publishing has been, and will undoubtedly continue to be, the communication medium most accessible to women. Unfortunately, the WRB's desire to encourage diversity is not as evident in the issues I have seen as I would like, as I will explain . Nonetheless, they have take important step.

My impression of WRB is based on five issues which have appeared in 1984. First, some comments on practical matters. The WRB format tabloid style, like that of New York Times Book Review, twenty pages - is convenient to handle. And I find the straight for ward layout and relatively large print make for easy reading enough photos and graphics to break up the text. Each issue reviews twelve or fifteen books at some length, sometimes reviewing two or three related books together. There have been several reviews of journals I was particularly impressed the one on Conditions in the April 1984 issue - and one on the Press series, also in April. This is an excellent approach to take, since it adds a sense of context and history to the coverage of current feminist literature in the WRB.