Yes, I spoke about that earlier. Among other things they must take into consideration the immigration process, the experience as a whole, the loss of reference points and the fact that many of these women are for the first time responsible for everything in the family—housework, educating the children, family balance—aside from having to find a job and deal with the family dynamics that have been perturbed.
Often, the services offered by women's networks have a feminist approach that encourages women to be independent and take their destinies into their own hands. I'm not saying that the feminist approach is bad, but in the case of immigrant women, we must absolutely take into account their central, essential role and what the family and the community represent for them. So we cannot do interventions that are based solely on the individual's independence.
It is important to take into consideration the environment, the community and the family. That is what the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec does in its activities. We really want to work with the person where they are. Quietly, things evolve from there. Newcomers adapt much more quickly than people think. A lot of changes happen, but the host society only sees the distance still left to cover rather than the distance that has already been covered.
So we have to work with the person where they are when they arrive and help them evolve gradually, taking the environment into account as well as the frame of reference the person has. It may be that that frame of reference is different from those that are valued in Canada. So we have to gradually help these two realities to converge, to meet, and help with the necessary mediations so that the transition happens. The point is not to lose one's culture of origin, but rather to see what compromises can be achieved, what changes are acceptable, and which are less so, and to work step by step on integration at all of these levels.