Who speaks of literacy and sexuality in the same space? While this disconnection reflects the erasure of women's experience from the social production of knowledge, it is sedimented by practices of institutionalized heterosexism which regulate sexuality as private, unspeakable, and, for women, in opposition to intellectual performance. It is indicative of these separations that educators who advocate literacy for 'empowerment' do not ask, 'What does it mean to speak of power for a woman whose subordination is accomplished through sexual objectification?' This question is especially pertinent for critical literacy, for 'woman's' sexual subordination hinges upon her not threatening male authority, an authority which is threatened by her attaining higher levels of literacy. (1993:335)

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For you to do:

Think of your own experiences and those of women you know. What literacy tasks are assumed to be women's work? Who pays the bills, writes the thank you letters and birthday cards, keeps in contact with friends and family? What are some of the responses you have seen and heard men make to women who speak out, are competent, are more highly educated than they are?

Comments

When I asked others to think about this question I was surprised by how many women did do all the family work of literacy and had not really noticed. They took it for granted that they did these literacy tasks, 'women always do, don't they?' Hardly any women said they got letters or cards from their fathers or brothers! Listening carefully in meetings where men and women were present also revealed some interesting patterns of men's and women's talk: ways in which men picked up the ideas of other men, for example, and ignored women's comments. I shall be listening carefully to the men and women around me in future!

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Will literacy change women's lives?

The literacy programmes which are offered to women therefore need to recognise the inequalities taken for granted in women's lives. If they do not help women to look critically at their own lives, literacy programmes will only fit women more firmly into their traditional roles. During research I carried out with women in rural, Maritime Canada I explored this promise of literacy programmes. In an article which summarised my findings from the study I wrote:

Women's dependence on men, on inadequately paid work and on social service assistance is threaded through the lives of many of the women I interviewed. This dependence leads to violence: the violence of women's isolation in the household and sometimes actual physical violence; the violence of the drudgery of inadequately paid, hard, monotonous jobs; the violence of living on an inadequate welfare income and enduring the humiliation of receiving assistance. Some of the violence is spoken of and shared, but much is endured in the silence and isolation of the home.