In teaching, in particular, I have found this to be very exciting. Initially students are a bit thrown off, but they become more alert than when you start with something they're used to. Students don't expect there to be Muslim feminists, so if you start with the writing of a Muslim feminist they begin to realize that they have to think about these issues in a different fashion.

I think that dealing with the question of diversity is not so hard in the educational world. Not to do it in women's studies and in an educational setting is to miss a really important opportunity. But it means applying diversity to every aspect of teaching. It means applying it to the content of what's being discussed, to the process by which it is discussed, to the question of access, to who's present and has access to the classroom, to the project, or to the group that's doing the work. Diversity is not just a process question. It's all of these things.

Women from Uganda. S. Korea and India participating in the international planning meeting. May 1990.

Sharon: What specifically does diversity mean in terms of access to education?

Charlotte: It is very important to be creative about addressing the needs of women and questions of access within the context of the cultural situation in which women live. You may want it to change. The women may want it to change. But it won't change until it evolves in a way that takes account of why the situation is as it is and how those needs can be met in another way.

For example, when I was working with some groups in India, I visited a project, in the south of Calcutta, with rural village women who were concerned about illiteracy among women and girls. They first opened a' girls school at regular school hours but few came. So they evolved a more creative and practical way to give access to education to females. School hours were set at times that did not deprive families of their children's necessary labour. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, in order to get families to send their girls to the school, they made the school co-ed but would not accept sons unless the daughters were also sent. Thirdly, they started a mothers' club, because they saw that change for girls was closely linked to the situation of their mothers. Since this club was connected to the school it gave a legitimacy to the women's meeting that they wouldn't have had if someone had started a women's organization independently.