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by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Although I am aware of many examples of empowered women, two stand out to me particularly. Neither of these women stands out in terms of social prominence. They were simply working-class women who learned to live transformative lives rather than lives characteristic of conformity and acquiescence. I came across these two women while doing interviews for two different oral history projects.

The first woman, Norma, I had known all of my life. As a young mother, during the 1940s, Norma's first husband left her for another woman. As a little girl, Norma had faced much persecution from teachers at her school and her stepmother and father abused her. Her story is a dramatic one of how a woman empowered by interior attitudes and resolve can work transformative magic in her life circumstances. Taking advantage of the shortage of male workers during the Second World War, Norma was able to find work in a local factory and gain the notoriety of being "able to do a man's work." "I learned many a man his job but never got a man's wages". She was able to support herself and her son with a dignity and independence that not only changed her own life but the lives of many others who came to know her. Norma is not a classic feminist in the sense that she was able to articulate a feminist philosophy of life in a manner that put her on a platform as a lecturer. She was not contentious or militant. Yet her life characterized resistance to stereotype and she did not conform to forces that tried to marginalize her and limit her potential. As a result she lived a life that was actualized by accomplishment rather than frustrated by the limitations that she felt were imposed on her. She clearly expressed what she perceived was justice and injustice in terms of gender relationships but did so from a perspective of being empowered to face life and not simply as one limited by an adversarial tradition. I have written about Norma in much more detail elsewhere.

Joan was much more militant than Norma in terms of her involvement as a change agent. In her mid-thirties her alcoholic husband no longer supported her and her five children. In the early 1970s, just before Christmas and after over fifteen years of absence, she re-entered the workforce as a cleaning worker at a local hospital. She quickly became involved in the local chapter of the union and after only six

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