Affilia

It is important to bridge the work of feminist scholars who toil in their respective fields and are not always directly connected to one another because they publish in a plethora of different outlets. Beginning with a brief background on the emergence of critical gerontology, the work of feminist activists is briefly reviewed and the scholarship of feminist gerontologists in social work is highlighted. Using the current narrative on civic engagement as an exemplar of how the discourse changes when feminist gerontologists raise questions about unintended consequences, the article ends with implications for social work educators and practitioners.

This article reports on a content analysis of the social work research literature to assess the level of attention that the profession has paid to the rape of adults. The analysis of 66 social work articles published between 1975 and 2008 revealed that rape was a primary focus in about one third of the articles. However, 94% of the articles connected rape with another issue that was central to the profession (such as domestic violence or mental health). The majority of articles were client focused, rather than addressing practitioners' needs or macro-level issues. A large number of articles framed rape as a form of domestic violence; however, there is a clear need to address the issue of rape both within and outside the context of domestic violence. Implications for future research are discussed.

This article updates a previous content analysis of abstracts published in 17 social work journals from 1988 to 1997, which responded to the search words women and social work. Comparisons include the number of articles per journal, women’s social identities, themes and curricular areas, authors' analytical methods, and the amount and degree of feminist content. The findings revealed a decrease in both women’s and feminist content. Mothers/caregivers, medical/mental health patients, and battered women continued to be the most frequent referents. Health, mental health, and violence prevailed in themes, casework/human behavior and the social environment and social policy dominated curricular areas, and empirical articles topped the analytic category.

This article reports on a study that used qualitative interviews with 10 social workers about their therapeutic practice with women who were sexually abused as children. It explores two dominant discursive themes that were identified in the analysis: normalizing the effects of childhood sexual abuse and gender power in practice. The analysis found that while engagement with narrative therapy brings a strong emancipatory orientation, normalizing the effects of abuse by distinguishing them from “real” mental illness comes at the cost of restigmatizing other groups of clients, and dualistic understandings of feminism and post-structuralism narrow engagement with the complex ways in which gender power operates in women’s lives.

This article examines gender sensitivity among social workers in different service settings, who handle domestic violence cases and its implications for social workers' professional development in Hong Kong. The findings of in-depth interviews with both social workers and survivors of domestic violence revealed that the major difference in the handling of domestic violence cases by social workers in family settings and those working in shelters or with survivors' groups is that the former perceive women’s problems as family problems that require mediation and adjustment, whereas the latter consider them to arise from an imbalance in power relations between men and women, thus leading them to focus on enhancing women’s well-being in their practice. Helping social workers to recognize structural inequality between men and women is the starting point for the development of gender-sensitive practice in domestic violence cases.

For the past few decades, Kerala, India, has been heralded as the model of development and has attracted significant media and academic attention. Among its most noteworthy achievements are its literacy, life expectancy, and mortality rates and state government spending on social welfare. However, these macrorealities mask many unpleasant microrealities, such as subjugating cultural practices and violence against women. This article explores the social system of Kerala to identify the invisibility of highly literate women in Kerala. The objectives are to deconstruct the gender paradox in Kerala and to discuss strategies to transform the dominant discourse including social work.

This article examines the life stories of women leaders in the People’s Republic of China, particularly their paths to leadership, in the context of sociohistorical changes that have unfolded in China since the late 1970s. It illustrates how women developed their attitudes toward leadership roles and their unique leadership style. By unveiling the dynamic interplay between culture and institutional factors presented by social change, the authors argue that the choices these women leaders made were shaped by their continual efforts to reconcile conflicting roles arising from two axes: the “expert-official” and the “private-public” dichotomies. The article concludes with an urgent call to policymakers to protect the rights of Chinese women by developing a workplace policy that promotes gender equality at the top of the political pyramid. Such a policy would take into consideration the inherent frictions and dilemmas experienced by Chinese women leaders.