BOOKS / LIVRES

Survival Skills for Women

by Maggie Ziegler

"Survival Skills for Women" is a facilitator's manual for a series of workshops designed to provide women with basic information on understanding and coping with their lives. The workshops cover three areas: "Exploring Feelings", "Dealing with Stress", and "Assertiveness Training". This article describes the manual, how the manual came about, and some of the training sessions which were conducted using the material. A tentative evaluation will also be given.

THE PROCESS

The idea for the project originated from concerns of women involved with women's education and advocacy at Kwantlen College who noticed a gap in the continuing education programs relating to women's mental health. While there were isolated workshops on stress, assertiveness and self-improvement, none addressed the issue of how women's emotional experience is constructed nor its implications. These women wanted material that would locate stress and assertiveness in a broader context and that could be used in continuing education departments, women's organizations, community groups and other educational institutions, to help women identify and explore emotional and personal concerns, and increase their awareness of social factors.

The women organized a committee, obtained a small grant from the Health Promotion Directorate of Health and Welfare Canada to design a manual for facilitators, and hired Sandy Berman and me to produce the manual. We were also asked to hold an initial workshop to train women in using the manual.

THE WORKSHOPS

The first section of the manual outlines a workshop on "Exploring Feelings". The section focuses on exploring different facets of women's emotional experiences and connecting them to social attitudes towards women. It is based on the assumption that without a basic comprehension of feelings and inner motivations, stress management and assertiveness become mere bandaids. To make sense of their inner experiences women need to put them into a feminist perspective of how emotional life is constructed and maintained. Although the workshop is not designed as therapy, some of the theoretical material has been borrowed from feminist therapists and psychologists.

By using the many experiential exercises listed in this section, participants can learn to expand their awareness of feelings and to distinguish thoughts from feelings. Introductory sections to the exercises detail ways of looking at women's experiences and give guidelines to facilitators on how to handle the material.

The second workshop, entitled "Dealing with Stress", builds naturally from the first, since a major source of stress is unexpressed and unresolved feelings. As awareness of feelings develops, so does awareness of stress patterns. Dealing with stress means not only learning to relax, but responding to and changing the sources of stress. Once awareness of feelings and stress patterns has been heightened, women have a better idea of what changes they wish to make in their lives and relationships.

The workshop on "Assertiveness Training" is offered last as it is a behavioral tool which helps turn personal insights into action in the social arena. The workshop focuses on turning increased self-esteem and self-awareness into a changed response to problems faced by participants. Assertive techniques are practiced using situations relevant to the group members' lives.

FACILITATION

The manual incorporates an approach to facilitation based on cooperation, power sharing and skill-sharing. In this view, the facilitator empowers the women in her group. Facilitators are encouraged to assist others to explore, identify and use their own knowledge, experience and skills and to make their own decisions. We have held trial workshops and developed a training session for facilitators. About 100 women have taken part in several training workshops, each lasting 2 1/2 or 3 days.