Adult literacy programs in Canada have been hard-won and are under almost constant threat, especially gender-specific programs where women can create community with each other and can build a safe place to address the issues of growing up in a chaotic environment, which frequently includes histories of abuse and incest. With the rapid and profound economic changes taking place here - in effect, a form of structural adjustment program - we need to be vigilant that we do not lose what we have achieved in terms of women-specific and woman-positive programming.

The fourth reason, that patriarchal structures have a vested interest in ensuring that the majority of women remain illiterate, and therefore vulnerable, has long been evident in both Canada and many nations of the South. Literacy programs present an opportunity for women to expand their power and control over their environments. This process can be seen as a threat by husbands, ex-husbands, fathers and others, who may respond with physical abuse, or increased violence of various types, in an attempt to force women to leave the program. Students I have taught in Canada have had their jaws broken, been kidnapped, and been attacked in public as they tried to pursue their education. When this type of oppressive behaviour occurs in the South it is often associated with "traditional" or fundamentalist views of women's role - at least this is the way it is reported in the western media.

The fifth reason for women's illiteracy rates, that some women resist becoming part of the modem world because modernization will not improve their lives or the lives of their communities, tells us a lot about the diversity of experience we must respect and learn from as we work for justice. For many women, power lies in traditional roles. For these women, violence comes with modernization, a process that undermines traditional values and structures, particularly through the "relocation of production to the newly - industrializing countries where labour is cheaper and more docile," (9). Modernization processes include urbanization and the introduction of cash into traditional economies, both of which have further marginalized women by creating an artificial dichotomy between types of labour: traditional, subsistence work, and modem, waged work. Women are expected to continue the subsistence work, but in a modernized economy it becomes less valued than waged work. As this transformation is linked to the introduction of consumerism as an ideology, men frequently embrace the concept work for wages, seeing potential individual consumption benefits without necessarily seeing that they should use their wages to compensate for the withdrawal of their labor from the community's or family's subsistence.

The disruptions in social relationships caused by modernization are not yet fully understood by its advocates. We can see this in the Canadian situation as well, although we went through the changes and disruptions in the more distant past (10). I would question whether we have yet adapted fully to the changes imposed by industrialization, given the continuance of excess workloads for women. In some respects things appears to be changing, but slowly. Very slowly. Is it any wonder that some women resist becoming part of a process that will undermine their traditional authority, without replacing it with something equally valuable?