Introduction

Literacy learners are frequently spoken of, and planned for, in the literature and in the programmes themselves, as if they were genderless. Where gender differences are recognised, women are often viewed only in traditional roles and the constraints on their lives are often ignored. This item will explore the implications of this omission, and focus on women as learners and their particular needs in literacy programmes.

Where are the women?

In 1987 I wrote:

In most of literacy discourse 'illiterates' are not differentiated by gender, but the reader can usually infer that 'people' are actually men. In this way women become 'other' in relation to men as the norm. (Horsman 1988: 123)

This criticism is still true in 1996. In the literature on literacy, even in the 1990s, there is still a marked absence of research that addresses women's needs. In literacy programming, too, there is generally little emphasis on whether men and women experience illiteracy, literacy programmes, or literacy learning differently. Over the years however, there have been a series of feminist critiques describing the invisibility of women in writing about literacy, and in the planning of programmes. These writers have all argued for the creation of literacy programmes which are relevant for women. Researchers such as Carmack (1992) and Kazemak (1988) in the United States, Thompson (1983), McCaffery (1985) and Cornes (1992) in England, Bhasin (1984) and Ramdas (1990) in India, MacKeracher (1987) Lloyd et al. (1994) and myself in Canada (Horsman 1990, 1995) have all addressed the question of relevant programming for women.

In many countries the majority of those with limited literacy skills are women. Girls are often given low priority for schooling. Even in Canada where statistics of 'illiterates' suggest that women are not over-represented, girls have often been pulled out of school to look after younger children and do household work when their mothers were busy with paid work. In spite of higher numbers of women with limited literacy skills in many countries, women frequently have less access to literacy programmes as adults. McCaffery noted in 1985 that the majority of adults who came forward to literacy programmes in England were men. Whatever the statistics about who is 'illiterate' in a particular country, generally little attention is paid to the different experiences of boys and girls or men and women: experiences of the school system, of parental attitudes, of being illiterate or of participating in groups or individual tutoring. I know of no literature, for example, which explores what it means for men with limited literacy skills to be unable to fulfil patriarchal roles of being the 'knower' in the family, or to have to seek help from women volunteer tutors or literacy workers. A literacy worker I once interviewed said that men tended to think their literacy skills were better than they were, while women thought their skills were worse. Her comment begs the question of whose judgement is more accurate, but makes vividly clear a difference she observed between men's and women's responses to low literacy skills. Such differences have not been explored in any depth.

Many of these writers are also critical of the ways in which illiterate people are presented in media accounts of illiteracy and in the publicity which seeks to encourage people to attend programmes. Here, too, women are often invisible, but when they are portrayed it is often as helpless and incompetent. Bhasin draws attention to the blame-the-victim approach, which focuses on the illiterate person rather than on the need for structural change. She argues that illiteracy is not a disease that needs to be eradicated but a symptom of the disease of poverty and inequality (1984:42)