Same Thoughts on Women and
Community Work
BY DENYSE COTÉ

[This article originally appeared in French in Women's Education des femmes, vol.6, no.3 (summer 1988).]

Denyse Côté

Women as volunteers have specialized in health, social and educational services and in caregiving activities. Volunteer work is, as we know, unpaid work which can, however, be quantified. Studies have identified the type of activity (leisure, social, educational, health, professional) and tabled the hours of volunteer work undertaken in our country (or provinces and territories) and its economic value.

Volunteer work has been defined by researchers in such a way as to exclude a large portion of women's unpaid community work; that work which, for some reason or other, cannot be quantified. This is the work involved in changing policies or institutions in a locality, in solving community problems which are not "official", in taking action, collectively, toward public education and improvement of community life. This is work done within community groups or outside of them, and directed at caring and/or serving the community. We know for a fact that women outnumber men in community groups. What we do not know is how to pinpoint the activities of women either within these groups or outside them.

Community work should be defined as a "people-based method" (1), practised within the framework of community groups, be they women's groups or groups where both men and women are active. Women's groups (2) have directly concerned themselves with problems encountered by women caused by gender-based oppression; men and the patriarchal system as a whole have been analyzed by women's groups as major obstacles for women. In mixed community groups, the gender variable has very seldom been taken into account; gender-based oppression has been relegated to the background. A universal vision of man and his rapport with the community has emerged (3), leaving responsibility for the relationship between the sexes solely to the realm of women's groups. Gender invisibility has therefore been the norm in community groups; gender neutrality has dominated projects aimed at challenging community structures and policies, at providing for the needy and improving community life.

More often than not, men are given the credit for community work. Though it is generally acknowledged that women are present en force in community groups and take charge of an important work load, somehow they are always more easily seen as participants, as consumers and/or providers of services. Their roles as instigators, pioneers, leaders, activists, or decision makers are rarely recognized and their contributions or their problems are seldom taken into account per se in the right place at the decision making level (4). The energies women direct, the way in which they take action and their specific influence on community life are not often seen as being relevant.

Women have always been assigned certain positions and specific roles according to the times and the societies in which they live. Whether or not they conform to these roles and positions, whether they accept or challenge them, the fact remains that women must acknowledge the social, cultural and religious taboos based on their sex and take them into account when they act. If we freely admit that the structures and dynamics of a society influence the community work that is done within it, why omit the effect of the relation- ship between the sexes?