The other aspect of the Centre that's important to me is what we call our global education program. This is aimed at bringing a global perspective to the North American women's movement and to women's studies. The education component recognizes that we live in a " global universe and we need to look at problems from a global perspective. For me, incorporating a global perspective into Women's Studies means recognizing the diversity of women's lives-not assuming that all women share a common experience.

Sharon: You spoke last night about how we have to learn to understand our diversity. Will you expand on that now?

Charlotte: First of all, I am very conscious of the comment made by a woman last night about the problem of even using the word "we". When we speak as we, which "we" are we speaking of? Usually it's "we" as North Americans or Europeans. For a number of years it's been a major complaint of mine that conferences of essentially white, western, industrialized countries are called "International". There's no other region in the world that holds events across two regions and calls them international. There's nothing wrong with regional events. In fact, I think there's a lot to be learned from the relationship between North America and Europe. But it should be understood as a bi-regional activity, or North Atlantic, not international.

I think that the broader issue is beginning" to take into account, at a deep level, the diversity of women's experience. Understanding that diversity is something that will bring strength to our movement and is not a threat to it.

Much of the reaction among white women to the questions of diversity, the raising of issues of racism and classism within the women's movement, has been fearful. The fear is that such questioning will destroy the movement, will destroy our unity, and we won't see ourselves as having something in common as women. But I believe the contrary to that fear. I believe that only as we take seriously the differences among women, the different forms that our oppression manifests itself in, will we begin to feel a solidarity not based on denying anyone's experiences, but that fully embraces all women.

That is what the work of the 80s has been about. It has been giving us material and information about the diversity of women's lives and the many varieties of ways that we are subordinated and oppressed.

The real task in the 1990s is to incorporate that diversity in a fundamental way, to rethink every issue with the diversity of women at the core. For example, I've encouraged people who are teaching courses on women to start the course from a non-traditional place. Whether the course is about women and health or about women and education or even on the history of women's movements, it should not start from the experience of white, western women but start from the experience of a group not usually thought of as at the centre of that discussion. For example, when I teach feminist theory now, I often start with a pamphlet from South Asia, Some Questions on Feminism and Its Relevance in South Asia, written by women from India and Pakistan, and we consider what feminism means from a different point of reference than the one that's dominant in our culture.

Start there and you begin to see how other feminisms are defined in different locations, and you build a notion of feminist theory or of women's experience as a multiple variety of things. As you look at all the different diversities, you can then ask, "What seems to be common to all these different writings?" or, "What are the ways in which all of these different women talk about some common experience?"

You arrive at the commonality after seeing diversity, rather than with the traditional approach which may start with a white, western, heterosexual mother in a married family and then include, as an afterthought, lesbian mothers, black mothers, disabled mothers, teenage mothers, etc., which supports the notion that there is one central experience and all these others are deviations. If you start from the idea that there are many different experiences, then you can talk about motherhood with all of these experiences taken into account. And whatever you begin to see in common, from the diverse descriptions, is much stronger than starting from one class or race or geographic definition.