St. John Hunter notes that, worldwide, illiterate people "include
the poorest of the poor in every nation. In rural areas, they are the landless
peasants, virtually enslaved by systems of production that deny them a just
economic return for their labor (sic). In urban centers (sic) they are the
unemployed and the underemployed, marginal and often transient populations,
excluded from the mainstream of the societies in which they live.... They have
only minimal power over their environment -- physical, political and
economic."
This lack of power echoes the lack of self-determination experienced by
women, most particularly women in conflict with the law. During the course of
this project, the Canadian Council on Learning Opportunities for Women was
consulted, and noted that:
- Only 25% of functionally illiterate women are in the paid labour force
compared with 60% of women as a whole;
- Half of all female-headed families live below the poverty line. The rate of
illiteracy in this group is much higher than the national average;
- Jobs available to women with poor reading and writing skills are
traditionally the lowest-paid jobs -- such as domestic work, sewing and machine
operation;
- The average woman of any educational status who works full time makes only
68% of what the average man makes. Women with less than grade 8 make an average
only 69% of what men earn.
Women, poverty, illiteracy, crime -- the links become clear when one
realizes that crime, particularly property-related crime, and a lack of
literacy skills, are common among people who are socially and economically
disenfranchised.
4.1 Literacy Programming for Women
Until very recently, "literacy programming was literacy
programming" that is, no differentiation was made between the needs of
male and female adult learners. Few scholars have seriously looked into the
relationships between gender differences in learning styles and needs, and
existing adult education programming. During the past decade, female
psychologists have posited that women tend to define themselves in terms of
connections, relatedness, and how they respond to others (Gilligan, 1982;
Noddings, 1984). Males, on the other hand, are socialized to see themselves in
terms of separation autonomy and adherence to abstract standards of justice and
reciprocity. These individualistic, male-identified values are reflected in
much of the traditional "one-on-one" learning which takes place in
adult education today.
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