Motherhood: One More Way to Learn

BY CHRISTINA STARR

One fine day late in spring, not long after my daughter was born, I decided to take a stroll (and the stroller) over to Robarts library at the University of Toronto to return a book. I had, in the course of recent studies, visited Robarts many times and this trip seemed no different until I arrived at the austere front entrance which I suddenly realized has about a hundred steps. My baby and I, and her stroller, would not be going in this door.

Geneva Starr (lower right) sits in at P.C. part offices with Mothers and Children Against War.

Other days on my maternity leave I tried going to the bank, visiting stores, meeting a friend at a restaurant, or taking the streetcar to a park. Never easy. Eventually I became adept at maneuvers like holding the door open with my backside while I pulled the stroller through, but in the process I have become acutely aware just how completely we exclude disabled people in our society. As a woman with a stroller I don't claim to experience nearly the same discrimination, but I certainly learned that, in some cases, someone who moves by way of a chair with wheels would get no further than the comer of their block. I learned, too, that these people would not be nearly so "disabled" but for the handicaps an able-bodied society puts in their way - like steps, like doors that don't stay open on their own.

Diane Driedger and April D'Aubin offer for us, in this issue, some criticism of all the recent activity around literacy and International Literacy Year. "Literacy for whom?" they ask. The needs of people with disabilities, especially women, are not adequately addressed by educational institutions nor in literacy programs or policy.

I decided to try to carry my baby and her stroller up those steps into Robarts (though, being the universally sympathetic figure of a mother and child, a man who happened along immediately assisted me and also admired my "sweet little boy"). There is a wheelchair accessible door at Robarts but it's out of the way around the other side of the block. It has a long ramp (it has to be long to reach the height of all those steps) and exits into a not very busy park-like area at the back of the library that at night is only dimly lit. I'm sure a disabled woman working at Robarts would - regrettably - curtail her study hours at night if this is the door by which she has to leave. In our Commentary, Liz Stimpson, chair of the Disabled Women's Network in Toronto, rails against similar inconveniences and examples poor planning at other institutes of learning in the city.

As a mother I have also been surprised and enlightened by the intensity of love and commitment that has seized me since the birth of my precious little girl. That is why, when I saw the Associated Press photo of a brand new mom in combat fatigues saying good-bye to her seven-week-old baby as she prepared to obey the commands of her president and sail to the Persian Gulf, 1 felt sick. What kind of training is it that exacts from a woman, from any human being, the compliance to leave children and family and go off to war? Lanie Melamed writes in "Living and Learning" that if we kept more play in our education we might not gel so caught up in competition, in winning and losing. And in two special issues planned for later this year, we will look at girls and women in science and technology and consider the exclusion of their concerns from these areas. That consideration might help to explain why much of science and technology has to do with making war.

My daughter and I have been very active in protesting the war in the Persian Gulf, and we intend to remain active until the message is relayed that the women and children of Canada don't support this ludicrous decimation of life. (A recent NAC pole indicated that 64% of women in Canada are opposed to the Gulf war.) 1 have learned through motherhood that any life is too valuable to be sacrificed to the power interests of politicians (including the life of the planet) and we as women, with our long experience of struggling to make known another point of view, need to raise one loud voice for our children and the children of the world in an unequivocal demand for peace.

Christina Starr is the Managing Editor of Women's Education des femmes. Her daughter, Geneva Anne, is now one year old.