Lack of literacy skills in adults is also linked to early schooling experiences. In Canada, where we have universal primary schooling, our rates of illiteracy, while high (2), are significantly lower than in certain other parts of the world. From Canadian women who lack literacy skills we can learn that there are many reasons why women might reach adulthood without achieving literacy: the school system could not accommodate their learning style; their lives were chaotic as children, meaning that survival was a higher priority than schooling; they were pulled out of school to assist with work in the home; or they have been living with learning disorders that were never diagnosed, to give just a few reasons.

In the South, children frequently do not have the opportunity to attend school, because of the lack of schools and teachers. And not every child who attends school becomes literate, due to poor pedagogical practices; UNICEF argues that current rates of adult illiteracy are related to poor schooling (3). As well, girl children are much more likely to be pulled out of school early in most places (parts of southern Africa (4) and the Caribbean are an exception to this generalization) to assist with work at home, and prepare them for their expected roles as wives and mothers, and so on. It is clear that there is no justification at all for the position that women have not acquired literacy skills because they have not tried hard enough.

The second reason given for women's low literacy skills, that the content of literacy materials and programs has been irrelevant, has much research to back it up. Indeed, in many places, people do not yet see the full value and use of literacy (5). We know that it is human to resist change, unless the benefits of making change outweigh the discomforts of the status quo. Indeed, in many places of the world, education is not a felt need because meeting the demands of survival is a consuming struggle every day (6).

When women are actually in literacy programs, the materials they have access to tend to reinforce ghettoized roles - reproductive and domestic labour - at the expense of recognizing women's multiple roles within families and communities (7). Pictures in these materials tend to reflect and reproduce women's oppression and invisibility by showing women only in passive stances, by drawing women smaller than men in pictures, and by reinforcing strictly domestic and reproductive roles.

When on a solidarity visit in Giza, I examined the official government textbook. I was illiterate in this situation - not able to read, write or speak Arabic at all. This is important to note because all the information I could gain about the content of this book came from the pictures I saw and the questions I could therefore generate. I leafed through the whole textbook looking for pictures of women and found only one, though every story was accompanied by a picture. In this picture, every woman was pregnant or accompanied by small children, or both. I asked what the story was about and was told that the subject was family planning. This confirmed what I had been told at the conference about the paucity of images of women in literacy materials. It also showed me that the only role for women recognized by the writers and developers of the Egyptian government's literacy textbook was their reproductive role. The agricultural work Egyptian women undertake, participation in the paid labour force in a variety of capacities, food preparation, household work, beer-brewing, and all the other types of work with which women engage, were completely ignored.

The third reason, that not enough money has been spent on programs, does not need much more clarification. The needs are vast; the numbers are growing. It seems self-evident. However, it is important to recognize the role of the debt crisis in aggravating this situation. Structural adjustment programs, imposed by the International Monetary Fund and adopted by many countries, have meant significantly less resources for social spending - which covers things like education and health - as well as the deterioration of living standards for most people, and decreasing formal employment opportunities (8). Many poor families have been forced to withdraw their children from school, especially girl children, due to the imposition of school fees. Structural Adjustment Programs also result in increasing demands on women's work and duties, as well as increasing frustrations among unemployed men.