Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Women, Education, Childcare - and MoneyAuthor(s): Joanna McMinn, Helen Shaw and Theresa MoriartySource: Fortnight, No. 254 (Sep., 1987), pp. 12-13Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25551281 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 09:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Fortnight Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Fortnight.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.142.30.50 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:14:36 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

In a mixed area on the Antrim Road a small community-based women's project, which started

off from a children's playground, has evolved into an integral part of the local community.

Liz Keogh, co-ordinator of the 1.2.3 Nursery Group, hopes to see

the centre running from 9 am to 9 pm this winter - between

playgroups during the day and classes in the evenings

- but she stresses the centre's success has

nothing to do with people like her and places the laurels firmly on the heads of the local women.

"It's all their work: nothing would have happened if they hadn't come in and taken an

interest," she said. From the

frantic days a year ago when she

started the ball rolling with a

playgroup for preschool children, she describes her work now as "co-ordinating": getting

together what the people themselves want.

A year ago the local support group for the project carried out a door-to-door survey to find out

exactly what people wanted.

Again and again 'something for the children' came back as the key priority and in October last year 1.2.3. opened its doors,

initially offering a playgroup a

couple of mornings a week. As

demand and local support grew, however, this became a morning

playgroup five days a week and an afternoon one on four.

As the children came in the mothers came in too, and soon a

mothers and toddlers group was set up. The women began generating their own ideas, looking for daytime classes.

A Fresh Start programme -

involving women's health, assertiveness and creative

writing - nurtured many of those

ideas and gave the women the confidence to follow their ideas

through. Meanwhile, a very successful summer scheme,

catering for 90 children, ran to the end of August and now an after-school club is planned.

This autumn the group plans to extend the evening classes,

offering an open forum to any group, provided it is not religious or political. So far it has

managed to sidestep the sectarian politics of Belfast and attract broad-based, cross

community support. For Liz the real success story

is the way in which the women

mostly mothers - have taken

charge of their own centre.

"They're dead keen - prepared to

talk to anyone and full of ideas," she said.

The centre has provided the women with a focal point

-

something to break the isolation of urban living, and a positive

way of providing their children with practical back-up and care.

Mixing education and childcare - some of the women from 1.2.3

Changing attitudes of women to their lives have been reflected in a whole range of educational initiatives - aimed at opening doors previously closed in their faces. Here, JOANNA

McMINN describes the innovative work of the Women's

Education Project, while (left) HELEN SHAW finds out what a difference childcare can make. And (right) THERESA

MORIARTY reports on a remarkable international women's

studies conference in Dublin over the summer.

Women, education,

childcare -

and money [-in spite of lack of resources,

Imarginalisation and often complete

invisibility, women's groups are

1_lemerging as one of the most positive

developments of recent times. There is a

growing readiness, particularly among wom

en's groups in working-class areas, to assert

their own needs and aspirations. With this

growth has come an increasing demand for

education.

The Women's Education project has been

significant in that development - both as a

reponse and a catalyst. It has been a

recognition of the isolation many women

experience looking after young children in the

home, as well as a response to growing

unemployment among women and lack of

training opportunities. A response too to the

exclusion of women with domestic respons ibilities from mainstream further and

continuing education - in fact the project is a

product of that exclusion.

It is precisely because there is no overall

policy or comprehensive provision in adult

education specifically for women that the gap has been occupied by women themselves, with

radical and innovative methods and courses.

Women's education takes as its starting point the reality of women's lives: the demands that

are made on them by their families, the

inequalities with which they struggle, their

efforts to make ends meet on low income. So

classes are held in local community centres,

halls or playgroup premises -

anywhere there is

a room. What women need, first and foremost,

is space to discuss common experiences, time

to reflect on their insights, and encouragement to believe in themselves and their plans for

change - both in their lives and in their

communities.

The Women's Education Project has evolved its own way of working. The project

worker goes out at the invitation of a local

_ group, listens to the women concerned,

discusses their interests and needs, and it is

usually out of such a group planning session

that a course results. These are not geared to

qualifications but rather the sharing of ideas,

skills and knowledge - a collective teaching

and learning where tutor and group can put

everyday experience into a wider context.

A creche worker is paid for where necessary -

but with the group itself choosing someone

known and trusted locally to look after the

children. Good childcare is crucial if women

are to start giving some thought to issues and

activities in which they wish to engage. Lack

of childcare is a major factor in excluding women from wider social and political

involvement, for example within trade unions

and of course from further education. Children

love a good creche and benefit enormously from the social interaction with other children

and adults in a stimulating environment.

And classes are free. There is an ethos in

further education that people only value what

they pay for. But, as Ailbhe Smith has put it:

"Why should those whom the educational

system has already failed because they belong to the 'wrong' sex and/or class have to pay to

compensate for the fundamental defects of a

system over which they have no control?"

The role the Women's Education Project has set for itself is to act as a resource for

local groups, and to develop a model of

education over which women have control and

which they can influence to meet their needs

as they define them. Over the past three years it has run courses on women's health,

assertiveness, welfare and legal rights, creative

writing and making a fresh start.

More recently, the project has offered

courses with a more overtly feminist approach -

women's studies have been running in a

couple of areas and a jointly organised

community women's studies course for the

University of Ulster's extra-mural programme has formed the basis of the university's new

12 September Fortnight

This content downloaded from 193.142.30.50 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:14:36 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

certificate in Women's Studies. Its strength lies

in bringing together the approach of informal

women's education, egalitarian and

experience-based, with the academic content of

feminist scholars. The aim of the project's women's studies classes is not to proselytise

-

it wouldn't be necessary - but to make a

feminist analysis accessible and accountable to

the lives of working-class women.

All this activity has not been confined to

Belfast. From Derry and Coleraine down to

Strabane and Newry, an informal network of

organisers, tutors, women activists and wom

en's groups - for the most part completely

outside educational institutions - has been

quietly challenging the existing (lack of) provision. It is quite possible that another

Women's Education Project will get off the

ground in Derry over the next year, provided it

can attract funding. And there is the rub. Because, no matter

how great the energy and commitment, there is

precious little financial support from statutory sources. The Department of Education funds

voluntary organisations and it has given

recognition - but little support

- to women's

education outside the FE sector. Women's

groups, as well as resource agencies like the

Women's Education Project, are left in the

difficult position of finding money from charities and trusts, the majority of which do

not see women as having any priority. Indeed,

in the Directory of Grant Making Trusts women don't even appear in the index.

Trusts only give funding for short-term

projects; very few fund salaries, fewer still

running costs. The most sympathetic prefer innovative schemes, so there is pressure to

keep thinking up something new rather than

consolidating what has already been achieved.

The Women's Education Project has done

well to survive on trust funds for nearly four

years, and it has been well supported by the

Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust. Neverthe

less, its future looks bleak with no prospect of

permanent, or even adequate, funding in sight. One strategy is to direct resources more

towards local groups -

sharing skills

knowledge and information so that they can

have the experience and confidence to raise

their own funds, organise their own projects,

employ their own tutors ... and in the longer term make a collective demand, based on their

own needs, for their right to education.

The world and her sister came to Dublin ECHOES OF the July week of the Women's Worlds congress and

festival are still resonating. The letters page of the Irish Times still

debates it. Irish women are organising to maintain its momentum and

keeping in touch with women from all over the world whose address

they exchanged.

Officially the congress was a women's studies conference to bring

together the wide-ranging researches of professional women in academic

and governmental institutions. And there were professors of political studies, United Nations project organisers, a director of the payloads

projects at Kennedy Space Centre, lecturers from social research

centres, university faculties' philosophers, psychologists and

agriculturalists.

The Irish organisers hoped that this display and exchange of

information would demonstrate

the need for women's studies

courses in Ireland. Yet the

congress soon outgrew this

modest goal. The paperwork that accom

panied registration was daunting.

Papers for the workshops,

symposia and paper sessions -no

one could explain the distinct

ions - were corn-pressed in a

book of abstracts two and a half

inches thick,, only a few leaves

short of one thousand pages. Dublin was the third and

largest international interdisci

plinary congress on women. The first was held in Israel, in 1981, the

second in the Netherlands, 1984. The next is due for New York in

1990. One thousand women came from 50 countries and almost as

many Irish women may have attended. As news of the congress filtered out and there were daily reports in

the newspapers and on television, women from all over the country flocked to Trinity College, confident that this represented something

they could not miss.

The visiting women who attended were overwhelmingly from the

United States. Only a handful came from Asian or African states, from Latin America or the Caribbean. The socialist countries were virtually

unrepresented. A unique feature of the Dublin congress was the inclusion in the

programme of Irish women's community groups alongside the

professional women's studies practitioners, which represented educational projects and health groups around the country.

Nor was the congress as academic as had been anticipated. A

combination of relevance and informality prevailed to overcome initial

reservations. Though the week got off to a shaky start, disappointment at Melina Mercouri's non-arrival quickly evaporated as the programme

got under way. The workshops were structured around a plenary session with a

keynote speaker each day. Kamla Bhasin transformed the language of

Women and Development from growth, gross national product and

production to mobilisation of the impoverished. Mary Daly spellbound her listeners with readings from her new book and Helen Caldicott carried on the dialogue on international nuclear disarmament from the

Moscow women's conference where she, and many of those who came

I WOMEN'S WORLDS J

to Dublin, had been the previous week.

International peace, ecology and world poverty were the more

sombre, underlying themes of many of the discussions in sessions on

war and patriarchy, cross-cultural feminisation of poverty, and women

and power. Each day the programme offered a constantly frustrating choice

between as many as 16 alternatives for one session. The festival that

was built around the conference provided poetry, story-telling, exhibitions and music representing the growth and diversity of

women's activity in the arts.

There was a feeling of solidarity that prevailed all week, though there were moments of outspoken conflict. Discussion of new

reproductive technology reportedl> led to painful confrontation about

women's experiences. And Irish

politicians met strong criticism at

a keynote address on women in

Ireland.

The experience of women in

Northern Ireland had only limited

expression in the programme and

they were barely represented among the community workshops.

A session on 'the Irish Women's

Movement: North and South' had

three speakers from the north - two

from Sinn Fein and one from

People's Democracy. They gave an

unproblematic account of the

historv of nationalist women's

organisation, social conditions prevailing in west Belfast, and

comparisons between the Relatives' Action Comittees during the prison protest and the Argentinian women's protest about the 'disappeared.'

Ailbhe Smith, the only contributor in this session from the south, was a more reflective speaker, charting a course taken by the women's movement in the Republic through different phases of activity and

consolidation.

While the visitors to the Dublin congress expected to hear of the

difficulties that confront Irish women, what struck them most by the Irish women's participation was the activity and enthusiasm they met.

For women whose confidence and optimism has been so undermined by the political and cultural offensive against women's progress, such views were encouraging, and surprising, to hear.

Other women had met the women's movement and feminist ideas for the first time and went home charged with new insights and

experiences, keen to build on the contact. Hundreds made new

friendships and re-established old ones. Dublin women had hosted many of the thousand delegates in their own homes, forging links of hospitality and warmth acknowledged in repeated tributes from the

visitors.

The July week has already struck roots for new growth. Women are

planning another festival next year. In October a conference of the Women's Studies Association of Ireland will include many of the talks

from the Irish community groups and researchers and will continue the

discussions, under the title 'Exploring Feminism'.

'Exploring Feminism' will take place in Liberty Hall on October 30 31. Details from Evelyn Mahon, WS Al secretary, National Institute for

Higher Education, Limerick._

Fortnight September 13

This content downloaded from 193.142.30.50 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:14:36 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions