This article examines the use of battered woman syndrome (BWS) expert testimonies in Canadian case law, regarding cases involving murder or attempted murder of abusive partners by women in violent intimate relationships. The purpose of this article is to contribute to literature about the use of BWS evidence in Canadian jurisprudence with connections to social work. The author provides a historical overview of the use of BWS testimonies in Canada and presents case examples. The article explores the benefits of BWS testimonies, its limitations, recommendations for reformulating its use, and implications for social work practice.
This article considers the challenges 21st-century social workers face and focuses specifically on that of racism including Islamophobia and structural inequalities in the society generally. It argues that social workers have the knowledge, skills, and values to endorse egalitarian relations across racial divides.
Intersectionality is a useful approach to understand the marginalization of ethnic minority (EM) sexual assault survivors. By using this approach, we are able to recognize the interplay and complexity between gender, class, and race that give rise to the inequality and oppression that experienced by EM women in Hong Kong. Findings of the study show that rape myths, gender-role perception, religion, kinship pressure, language barriers, citizenship, and immigration policy have constituted interlocking factors that shape the victim identity of EM sexual assault survivors.
How and in what ways might we respond to the mounting "care deficit," such that the dignity and well-being of both recipient and care provider are prioritized? This article takes up such a question by making use of feminist theories of care to recenter caring discourse away from neoliberal notions of autonomy and self-sufficiency and toward those of interdependence and social connectedness. In doing so, we interrogate the appropriateness—or not—of caring labor being delivered within the market by presenting a case study, detailing the promise of community-based, worker-owned cooperatives as a means through which to democratize caring labor.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a violation of human rights and one form of discrimination compounded by other discrimination factors as migration. The risk of violence can increase among immigrant women because of the legal and economic situation and the barriers they encounter to accessing information and support services. This qualitative study explores in-depth the perspective of experienced social workers about challenges faced by immigrant women suffering from IPV in Spain. This study may help professional social workers, others professionals, and public policy makers to design effective strategies for meeting the demands and needs of this population.
In the past 30 years, the number of incarcerated women in the United States has increased at a faster rate than that of men. This article outlines the ideologies and mechanisms of the "Prison Nation" and calls on social workers to conceptualize the effects of mass incarceration of women as an urgent social justice issue. We call for feminist social workers to adopt an anti-oppressive orientation to justice-involved women, build social work responses around national reform measures, and advocate for decarceration and restorative justice as a paradigm for responding to women’s involvement in systems which criminalize them.
This article makes the case that social workers and social welfare advocates need to be aware of pregnancy discrimination law to better advocate for individual clients and for changes in the existing law. It is one piece of gender discrimination and inequity. This article reviews the current law around the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, including the recent holding in Young v. UPS and other relevant case law. It also reviews recent changes made by the Affordable Care Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as related state laws designed to address pregnancy discrimination.
Social support and gender are important issues for understanding Chinese internal migrants. This study attempts to explore the social support conditions and needs of Chinese internal migrant women. Fifteen migrant women living in Beijing were interviewed about the types and sources of social support they received and needed. They reported receiving various types of support mainly from informal ties, but rarely from formal support networks. They identified the needs for social support clustered on instrumental, informational, and emotional support. Moreover, although they reported willingness to seek formal support, they expressed concerns for the credibility and availability of possible formal support.
A problem with the current conceptualization of youth sexual violence is its exclusion of chronic, "low-severity" forms of violence known as gender microaggressions. A review of the sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender microaggression literatures is undertaken to identify the unique and overlapping characteristics of each construct. A theoretically grounded conceptualization of youth sexual violence is presented with gender microaggressions, sexual harassment, and sexual assault existing along a continuum from chronic, low-severity to infrequent, "high-severity" offenses. In this reconceptualization, gender microaggressions exist as a unique form of youth sexual violence and function as a potential "gateway mechanism" to legally actionable offenses.
This article reports findings from a literature review of facilitators and barriers to domestic violence service seeking among American Muslim women. Racial, cultural, and ethnic differences were also examined. Facilitators and barriers to domestic violence service seeking were (1) cultural perceptions of abuse; (2) religious perceptions of abuse; (3) children; (4) feelings of embarrassment, fear, and shame; (5) immigration status and language barriers; (6) education level; (7) knowledge and perception of services; and (8) informal supports and support systems. However, the extant literature does not fully capture the diversity of American Muslims. Implications for future research are discussed.
Vivian Carter Mason successfully utilized her social work skills during the Massive Resistance Era in Virginia. Through organizational strategies with black and white women, her leadership was indispensable, as a social worker who focused on human and civil rights. Her skills were not merely a substructure of the civil rights movement, rather her work provided a major dimension of women’s leadership through the creation of the Women’s Council for Interracial Cooperation. It engaged in community mobilization and made public education a priority for all children. This interracial model has implications for work and can be conducted today among women social workers.
Transgender and gender-nonconforming (GNC) individuals experience homelessness at higher rates compared to the broader population, with many directly attributing homelessness to their transgender/GNC identities. Homeless individuals often engage in survival sex in exchange for food, housing, and other basic necessities. Few research efforts, however, have examined survival sex specifically among homeless transgender/GNC populations. Utilizing the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey (N = 6,454), this exploratory study analyzes relationships between homelessness and survival sex among transgender/GNC individuals. Results suggest these individuals experience homelessness at high rates, and their engagement in survival sex is associated with homelessness. Implications for social work are subsequently discussed.
Social work practice with sex workers in New Zealand occurs within a context of decriminalization since the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) in 2003. This article presents the findings of a qualitative study focused on social workers’ perceptions of sex work/ers, the PRA, and its influence on practice with individuals in the sex industry. The findings suggest that social workers hold nuanced perspectives on sex work. While decriminalization creates opportunities that support social work practice with sex workers, challenges to antioppressive, critical social work remain, even within the context of decriminalization.
Research continues to demonstrate that female social workers earn less than their male counterparts and experience significant barriers to professional advancement. Yet, little has been written about factors promoting women’s progress within the structural barriers that disadvantage women social workers. The combination of ethic of care, risk and resilience, and ecological theories informs the conceptual model outlined in this article. This model provides a roadmap for understanding national and organizational impediments to the success of women social workers and offers strategies for empowering women in the profession in the United States. Social work practitioners and administrators must engage in frank discussions about sexism, nurture leadership skills, and advocate for the elimination of gender discrimination and for the promotion of equal opportunity in social service organizations.
Among lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender and questioning youth, queer women, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth have been particularly marginalized in social science research, social service settings, and the community, where they are especially vulnerable to violence and significantly more likely to become involved in law enforcement. This is particularly the case for queer young women, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth of color and low-income youth. This article is based on life history interviews with young adults, aged 18–25, who have been incarcerated in girls’ detention facilities in the juvenile justice system in New York State. Interviews were analyzed using the Listening Guide and revealed themes related to the prevalence of interpersonal and state-sanctioned violence in participants’ lives, participants’ tremendous capacity for resiliency, and creative modes of healing.
Addressing sexual harassment in educational environments is integral for Title IX compliance; however, there are few estimates of prevalence of the phenomenon in social work’s signature pedagogy, field education. A survey of 515 bachelor of social work and master of social work students revealed that 55% of participants had experienced at least one incident of sexual harassment on the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire. Those participants who were younger, Latina/Hispanic, or in a committed relationship were more likely to report harassment. The most common perpetrators were other staff at the field placement and clients. Implications for social work education and practice are addressed.
Colleges are working to study and address sexual assault (SA) and dating violence (DV) on campus. This quantitative systematic review assessed 196 studies of SA and DV to evaluate if the literature fully reflects the demographics of American higher education. Results show disproportionate representation in the populations and settings in which research is occurring. No studies occurred at associates/2-year institutions, and participants are substantially younger and whiter than American college students overall. Education and prevention efforts that do not take into account the bias in these studies may exacerbate intersectional barriers for students.
Most of the extant social work research on biracial children and families has focused on the experiences of transracially adopted black or biracial children and their white parents or Afro-Caribbean/white children and their white mothers in the United Kingdom. This study adds to the body of knowledge by using focus group interviews analyzed through a feminist lens to understand the experiences of a diverse group of white women parenting their biological black/white biracial children. The findings suggest that having children locates them in a liminal space between whiteness and blackness. Many face racism from their families and communities, which they are unprepared for, given their upbringing as white Americans. Yet despite these experiences, many still practice color-blind perspective in socializing their children. Implications of these findings include the need for early intervention and support for white mothers raising biracial children as well as the need to challenge the assumption that mothers are solely responsible for the well-being and cultural and racial socialization of their children.
This article describes a program called "Connect and Change" in which psychotherapists in private practice offer long-term psychotherapy to women who have experienced intimate partner violence. The program is for women who cannot pay for therapy on their own.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an extreme example of gender inequality that compromises women’s citizenship. This article discusses the effects of IPV on women’s housing circumstances based on the findings of a large national Australian survey. The analysis found that IPV erodes women’s citizenship, which includes their access to safe and affordable housing, connections to "home," and participation in community life. Drawing on notions of gendered citizenship, this article provides new understandings about how women negotiate housing as a key dimension of citizenship in the context of IPV.
Female faculty may experience disproportionate caregiving-type responsibilities in the academy and at home. A web-based survey inquired about the impact of childcare responsibilities on research-related travel. A convenience sample of full-time faculty participated (n = 127). From the overwhelmingly female faculty respondents (81.3%), results show that childcare issues impact their ability to plan research travel, submit to professional conferences, and travel to give an invited talk. Faculty rank, discipline, and whether their partner was employed at the same university negatively impacted their ability to travel. Work/life travel policies may reduce barriers to travel, hence reducing a type of cumulative disadvantage.
In the United States, the institutionalization of people labeled feebleminded gained significant momentum during the Progressive Era. In this article, I use a biographical approach to examine social work’s role in the expansion of institutions for this population. I employ feminist standpoint theory to detail how the profession used its dominant standpoint—maternalism—as a political strategy to justify the segregation of people labeled feebleminded. Implications for future scholarship and for social work are presented.
Using interviews of 26 nonprofit domestic violence advocates, this article analyzes how South Asian–focused nonprofit organizations in the United States address the domestic violence–related intersectional needs of Asian Indian marriage migrants and the challenges they encounter in doing so. Our research indicates that these organizations offer services addressing a combination of structural and cultural needs that emerge from their clients’ social locations, but these organizations also encounter challenges in providing services targeting the specific subgroups of Asian Indian marriage migrants. To meet the intersectional needs of clients, there should be greater coalition-building within and between Asian Indian–focused and mainstream organizations.
Building social inclusion was the primary theoretical and practice goal of a group of researcher/academics who partnered with lone mother research assistants in participatory action research. One outcome was the creation of a video recording that was based on a day in the life of a lone mother receiving income support. The work of creating and sharing the video recording became the lightning rod that focused the partners’ attention on the complexities of negotiating power in the well-intentioned but problematic struggle to reconstruct stories about lone mothers. The distinct voices of individual authors are honored in this shared story about our journey.
The domestic violence (DV) field has long been known for its commitment to the integration of micro- and macro-level practice. This study explores the views of social workers providing clinical services within DV agencies in order to shed light on the ways in which they intellectually resolve the tensions inherent in carrying out the dual mission. Following the review of historical debates on professionalization of the field, the analysis focuses on clinical social workers’ efforts to construct integrated practices while responding to the historical context of feminism, which has shaped their agencies and the movement in the field.
This article investigated the frequency with which feminist identity and constructs are evident in the missions of state domestic violence coalitions in the United States. Findings from the analysis yielded low frequencies of feminist constructs present in the documents analyzed. Less than 10% of coalitions explicitly self-identified as feminist organizations in their materials, while fewer than 10% of coalitions acknowledged the relationship between patriarchy (9.8%) and gender inequality (7.8%) with violence against women. Coalitions more frequently employed the de-gendered language of empowerment and anti-oppressive frameworks rather than explicitly feminist perspectives. Implications of these findings for feminist informed advocacy are provided.
Centering on practice within child welfare systems, this article focuses on four representative narratives derived from 32 in-depth qualitative interviews with women who experienced intimate partner violence and involvement with the child welfare system in Manitoba and British Columbia, Canada. Narrative analysis was used to explore the content of mothers’ stories to understand how they position themselves against their child welfare workers’ understanding of them as "failed" mothers. This article concludes with recommendations to enhance practice with mothers who are involved with child welfare systems
There are many unspoken norms in the culture of academia that are subtly communicated and integrated into academic socialization, from the doctoral training process into advanced professional development. The predominance of white, Western, masculine, heteronormative, and (post)positivist norms of academia historically and contemporarily can create challenges for women of color who engage in scholarship that reflects feminist and cultural values. In this article, we briefly explore the complexities affecting feminist of color scholars negotiating such values within the context of academia and particularly in navigating collaborative scholarship. We respond to these obstacles and complexities by providing a treaty of concrete strategies for creating allied, cooperative working relationships across diverse positionalities that honor these values.
I am designing an elective on environmentalism in social work; there are numerous directions that the course could take. In the social work literature, an emerging theme is the depiction of Indigenous peoples as the original environmentalists, best situated to mentor the profession. However, I argue that this bypasses the ways that ideologies of nature operate in political spaces. Indigenous social movements around land and resources face resistance and we must engage with interdisciplinary critiques of the dangers of simplistic conceptualizations of the environment to see the intense political struggles taking place.
Little is known about black women’s perceptions of service barriers in mental health and substance treatment. This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the perceptions of 29 black women who received treatment in a small urban Northeastern city. Findings of the focus group data revealed participants’ experiences of services as discussed through the themes of bias and stigma; incompatible perspectives of wellness versus illness between consumer and provider; consumer mistrust; and holistic wellness. Participants endorsed counseling as a treatment strategy but were adverse to the use of medication. Practice and research implications are discussed.
To address the acute needs of rape survivors, forensic nurses and victim advocates provide integrated holistic care. Research suggests that conflicts between nurses and advocates can be common, but the nature and causes of these conflicts are largely unknown. Utilizing a qualitative case study approach, this study examined how and why an advocate–nurse team experiences conflict. The advocates reported experiences of subordination and disruption of their services, while nurses indicated that the advocates portrayed them negatively and distrusted their professional judgment. Role ambiguity contributed to these conflicts, whereas trust mitigated these conflicts but only existed among experienced nurses and advocates. The findings will be discussed from a feminist organizational lens.
The purpose of this study was to reposition the field’s understanding of unwed Korean mothers through narratives told by seven women about their experiences with social services and support during pregnancy and child rearing. Using a qualitative research framework combined with a phenomenological method, this study conveys their voices. The interviews indicate a discrepancy between the women’s needs and the services available, a discrepancy largely caused by the traditional social exclusion of unwed mothers. The interviews highlight the need to transform the current system from one that discriminates against unwed mothers to one that supports them in their child-rearing efforts.
Findings presented here draw upon 9 months of ethnographic research in three domestic violence service provision facilities as a means to articulate the key elements of social services fatigue, a phenomenon resulting from residents’ need to (1) document progress toward self-sufficiency, (2) use particular language and behavior in the presence of staff as a means to demonstrate this progress, (3) actively engage with staff and advocate volunteers, at least some of whom are victim-survivors of domestic violence themselves, and (4) quickly learn that these elements constitute conditions of service provision. It concludes by exploring the practical implications of recognizing social services fatigue as a problem.
This study explores inheritance experiences among people living with HIV. Although Kenyan law provides protections that guarantee rightful transfers of wealth, results from this phenomenological study indicate that poor women who have received an HIV seropositive diagnosis face exceptional barriers in the wealth transfer process. Participants paint a picture of a society straddling the line between social traditions and statutory laws, as it attempts to protect vulnerable groups in wealth transfers.
The Women’s Economic Stability Initiative developed and evaluated a new model to help low-income, single women with children make progress toward economic stability through vocational training/educational attainment (particularly in fields traditionally dominated by men), financial assistance for reliable childcare, transportation, and housing, and life coaching/case management using an empowerment approach. During the first 3 years of the initiative, participants made progress in attaining academic degrees, maintaining employment, experiencing modest increases in income, some success in building assets, and paying down/eliminating credit card debt. The initiative provided the support needed to help women gain greater stability for themselves and their children.
Women with physical disabilities are at high risk of intimate partner violence. In addition they are subject to inaccurate stereotypes, including challenges to their gender identities. Like other assaulted women, they may reframe the violence they experience in order to reduce stigmatization. Nineteen formerly abused women with disabilities discussed their coping strategies and reasons for remaining in abusive relationships. Results were content analyzed using feminist and Interactionist lenses. Respondents used neutralization strategies common to abused women but incorporated disability-specific elements. Accounts tended to bolster a stereotypically feminine (gendered, nurturant, or sexual) identity. Policy and clinical implications are discussed.
This article explores whether gendered norms and beliefs about emotions persist, as people relive and recount unexpected incidents of mass violence. The emotional expressions of men and women after two school shootings in Finland are examined and compared, based on qualitative interviews with local residents and crisis workers. Two emotional orientations in relation to school shootings were identified: being affected and being detached. Women were associated more with being emotionally affected and men with being detached. However, there was not always a consensus on how gendered individuals should express emotion in the aftermath of a school shooting.
This article explores the help-seeking challenges faced by a community sample of 25 Latina intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors. We include the experiences of Latinas who sought help from IPV services and those who did not. Additionally, we utilize an ecological framework to highlight the barriers that are present at multiple levels for Latinas who seek assistance, and we include their recommendations for increasing access. The information provided by these Latina survivors afford social workers the opportunity to address the barriers experienced by them as well as the opportunity to take a proactive stance in further enhancing services available in the community.
This qualitative study explored gender differences in socially interactive technology (SIT) use/abuse among dating teens from Michigan (N = 23). Focus group transcripts were coded using three categories: (1) type of SIT (e.g., social networking); (2) abusive action (e.g., monitoring); and (3) consequence (e.g., jealousy). Texting and social networking were the most commonly used types of SIT. Spying/monitoring, sexting, and password sharing/account access were the most common abusive actions. Distrust and jealousy were the most frequent consequences. Young men and women differed in their conceptualization of SIT abuse. Most participants agreed that some abusive actions were typical parts of adolescent dating experiences.
Indigenous pedagogies involve seeking out various forms of indigenous knowledge and a commitment to learning and teaching our traditions, ceremonies, philosophies and values, land, and languages. This article validates the differing ways in which indigenous people are infusing indigenous pedagogy into social work education. This article introduces two aspects of indigenous pedagogy that needs to be emphasized by indigenous social work educators: (1) mentoring and nurturing student identity and belongingness and (2) land-based education. For those interested in indigenous epistemologies, this article is intended to provide an additional resource to understanding and practicing indigenous pedagogies.
The Microenterprise Development Programs (MDPs) in the United States provide low-income women with business training and loans for their business start-up. This study investigates whether gender differences in social capital influence business start-up in order to find implications to improve female micro-entrepreneurs’ business start-up. By analyzing the data from Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamic (2001–2004), this research finds that women are less likely to utilize bridging and linking social capital for their businesses and also are less likely to start up business compared to men. This study provides implications that U.S. MDPs need to develop gender-specific social capital interventions that support female participants’ business start-up.
Grandmother caregiving in African American communities is a tradition used across social classes and circumstances of adult children and grandchildren. Yet, in the literature, it is viewed as a strategy used when the well-being of children is in jeopardy, families have low-incomes and limited resources, and parents are experiencing social problems. However, Mrs. Marian Shields Robinson is serving as a grandmother caregiver to the first African American First Family in the White House. This article provides an expanded view on the variations of grandmother caregiving by critically analyzing it and Mrs. Robinson’s role to provide social workers with four implications for practice.
We present the development and validation of a new measure to assess perceptions of community and social contexts (macro contexts) linked to controllability in relationships. The Controllability in Intimate Relationships Scale measures a person’s perceived situation regarding power, resources, and independence. This measure is a first step toward assessing links between macro contexts and control in intimate partner violence. Analyses conducted on the sample of 241 college students and community members included analysis of variance, Cronbach’s α, standard error of measurement, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Results showed good reliability and model fit. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
The study was grounded in the lived experiences of 13 female and 20 male children of Bangladeshi descent in New York City. It explored how the intersection of ethnicity, gender, generation, and migration shaped the distinctive experiences of the girls as they came of age, straddling the native culture and the host culture. By walking a tightrope between intergenerational continuity of normative gender practice, and change, prompted by egalitarian socialization, they foregrounded educational/career trajectories. Unlike the boys, who acquiesced with the status quo despite its equal opportunity disadvantages, they started rewriting the rules of engagement with patriarchy from this new threshold.
This article explores the structural factors that hinder Vietnamese immigrant wives from escaping domestic violence by applying an institutional ethnography perspective. Taiwan’s Domestic Violence Prevention Law requires the government to assign professionals to help abused victims, but the law in action shows that abused Vietnamese wives must go through multiple institutions, which put different structural constraints on them, to reach the goal of escaping domestic violence. Following the structural intersectionality approach, we contend that gender, nationalism, and class structural factors intersectionally impose constraints on immigrant women seeking help from the state.
This article addresses women’s experiences of abortion in the context of domestic violence, more specifically the decision-making process and the influence of the perpetrators in their decision. The data were collected through semistructured individual interviews with four Canadian women, aged between 23 and 36 years at the time of the interviews. Overall, the findings suggest that the factors influencing women’s decision can be grouped into the following four categories: domestic violence, the women’s individual situation, the couple’s situation, and external constraints. Implications for policies and practice are discussed.
Perceptions of "belly dance" are that it is degrading, exploitive, and incongruous to feminism. Curiously, however, the dance is incredibly popular in various parts of the world, including the United States, as a form of recreation and creative expression. This article examines the apparent disconnect between public perception and practitioner standpoint. Findings indicate a strong holistic healing component, particularly in terms of gendered interpersonal victimization, where belly dance seems to hold potential for self-exploration and discovery. Grounded historically, culturally, and empirically, these findings are discussed in terms of their application to social work practice, as it relates to alternative therapies.
Transnational feminist discourse has critiqued the pursuit of women’s empowerment through international development programs. Empowerment, when reduced to the provision of financial resources and services, is unlikely to lead to wider changes in gender inequality unless programs strategically combine credit with other vital services. We interviewed women participating in a multifaceted empowerment program in Mumbai, India, to explore the potential of the "Credit-Plus" model to facilitate pathways of individual and collective empowerment. Emergent themes of empowerment were enhanced socioemotional well-being, increased economic assets, and improved household gender equity. Interview responses demonstrate changes in individual, household, and collective agency dynamics.
The World Health Organization’s multicountry study of the prevalence rates of intimate partner violence found extremely high rates of violence against women in Ethiopia. This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this violence. By drawing on focus group research conducted with women in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, it explores the types of domestic violence experienced by these women, the impact of this violence, the reasons for it, and the multiple resistance strategies used by the women. The findings suggest a potentially important role for professional social work practice in the Ethiopian context.
In this column, the author presents a brief reflection of the challenges that are associated with teaching social work from a critical, antiracist, postcolonial, feminist, antiheteronormative, and self-reflective perspective and raises questions about the future of critical social work education within changing neoliberal institutional contexts.
The state of New Jersey has recommended the widespread adoption of bystander intervention education as a way to engage communities in the prevention of sexual violence. The study reported here gathered baseline data from a random sample of New Jersey residents about their attitudes as bystanders, gender roles, and sexual violence. The analysis of the data revealed that the women reported less support for rigid gender roles and a greater willingness to become active bystanders than did the men. Age and race were also significant in some of the scales. Implications for the development of programs to prevent sexual violence are discussed.
This article draws on data from a feminist, qualitative social work research project on women’s experiences of involuntary childlessness in the context of assisted reproduction. It argues that the dominant construction of "infertility" is partial, biased, and inaccurate and that it serves to maintain infertility as a "woman’s problem" to be addressed ideally via biomedicine and individualized approaches to the delivery of services. With reference to the background literature, women’s lived experiences of involuntary childlessness are explored. An alternative, multidimensional construction of involuntary childlessness is proposed and implications for social work in reproductive health and directions for further research are presented.
Although uncommitted sexual relationships have become increasingly accepted by adolescents, the contexts and socioemotional consequences of these relationships are unknown, particularly among Mexican American youths. Using focus group methodology, we explored the dating experiences of Mexican and European American male and female middle adolescents and found that "hookups" are a salient dating experience that generally occurs in the context of substance use and parties. Females, particularly Mexican American, were more likely to hold mismatched expectations of their desire for a hookup to transition into a more committed type of relationship. A feminist developmental lens is invoked in the discussion of the findings.
The study reported here determined that a national sample of single mothers had no health care coverage for an average of 9.35 months during a 32-month period during and after the Great Recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. Using comprehensively defined employment problems, it also found that adequately employed single mothers had the fewest months without health care coverage (M = 4.36), which more than doubled for those who experienced unemployment or involuntary gaps in employment, and tripled for those who experienced underemployment. The multivariate results confirm that employment problems place single mothers at a high risk of lacking health insurance. Implications for health care policy are discussed.
The past decade has seen growth in the international and interdisciplinary literature about competency-based education (CBE). With the passage of the Council on Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) in 2008, the U.S. social work education enterprise joined other professional groups in embracing CBE. This article analyzes the positions of both proponents and critics of CBE. It reviews the core competencies for social work identified in the EPAS and explores challenges and opportunities that CBE and the competencies present to feminist pedagogy. It concludes with a classroom exercise that is used to integrate feminist pedagogy and the core competencies.
This qualitative study examined the experiences of 25 parents who were estranged from their adult children in later life. Most participants experienced estrangement as an unanticipated, unchosen, and chronic loss for which they felt ill prepared. Most described a traumatic loss, ambiguous because of its uncertainty and inconclusiveness, and disenfranchised by societal ideologies embedded in constructs of parenting and motherhood as essential, natural, and universal. Many participants said they were subjected to the social stigma associated with tainted or devalued parenthood. In many cases, the gendered stigma accompanying estrangement positioned the female participants precariously for social rejection.