In many ways, women are still defined by home and hearth and many have not enjoyed the opportunities, the ways or means, to enrich their lives through continued education. The participants understood very well the benefits to be gained from further learning. One women said "I need self-satisfaction and to feel that I am part of today's world, so I will go back to education", while another said, "To be independent and to develop as a human being, I will turn to education." The women felt a need to enrich themselves in some capacity and they chose educational upgrading in some form to fulfill that need.

The sharing and the richness of the interaction were felt as the women discussed what kept them from going back to school. Concerns included lack of daycare, lack of financial help, family obligations, how to manage their time once back at school, and how to balance household and school work. They were painfully aware of the need for change in their lives but they also talked about guilt in relation to doing something for themselves, at last. They wished to explore counselling for themselves, to have upgrading skills made available, and to meet other women who had returned to school. They wanted to meet resource people, to gain motivation, and learn self-esteem for themselves.

The CCLOW project met a need for these women and gave them a place to be heard. It helped empower them to change and gave them tools, or information about available tools, to do so. They brought their own goals and an understanding that continuing their education might help them to gain their objectives. They were active in this changing of their lives and certainly were creating a future with a vision.

The handbook was developed and put together over the summer of 1989 by myself working with a local CCLOW committee. The final phase of the project, the resource workshop, was held at the end of the summer and was attended by approximately fifty women from the surrounding community of Fredericton. They came to receive copies of the handbook and to network with personnel from eight various educational institutions who had set up displays to offer information.

The whole CCLOW project provided the space and a "speaking place" for women to be heard. Their concerns were treated seriously, and the resulting handbook shows that specific questions were answered. Perhaps of most importance, the personal realities of the women were validated and documented.

Education itself is not sufficient to create necessary changes in the lives of women who desire equality, nor is it enough to say that women are free to attend educational institutions (3). We must continue to struggle for policies that make it easier for women to access education. Such policies as free and accessible daycare for all women with children, financial help, more employer support for training, better public transportation, recognition for the knowledge and skills that women bring to continuing education, and a more flexible timetabling of classes must all be implemented to accommodate mature women students (4).

The CCLOW project provided one strategy of change for those who participated. But there is a pressing need for the whole social system to take the concerns, the questions and the strengths of women seriously. Such consideration would demand a different kind of educational system (5), and only through such radical social change will full liberation for all mature women be possible, and only then will all women be free from social and personal barriers to continued education.

Judith Grant is an M.A. student in the Department of Sociology in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her interest focuses on women and education, including feminist teaching and research, and working with women in the community and their continuing educational needs.

Breaking the Barriers: Women and Continuing Education went through a second printing in the spring of 1990; copies are available from Wynne Farr, CCLOW-New Brunswick Director, Comp.1, Site 14, R.R.#6, Fredericton, N.B., E3B 4X7.

1. Potter, Judith and Judy Spear. A Profile of Adult Learners at the University of New Brunswick. Fredericton: University of New Brunswick, 1987, p.iii.
   
   
2. Eisenstein, Heather. Contemporary Feminist Theory. Boston: Hall, 1983, p. 35.
   
   
3. Wismer, Susan. Women's Education and Training in Canada: A Policy Analysis. Toronto: CCLOW, 1988, p.32.
   
   
4. Miles, Angela. "Women's Challenges to Adult Education" in The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education. vol.3, no.1, 1989, p.10.
   
   
5. Hutchinson, Enid. Women Returning to Learning. Cambridge: National Extension College, 1986, p.113.