Sexual Orientation,Gender, and Gender Identity Microaggressions: Toward an Intersectional Framework for Social Work Research

ABSTRACT

Professional ethics compel social workers to address all forms of discrimination and oppression. Microaggressions can contribute to health disparities for marginalized groups; yet, little is known about the frequency, mechanisms, and impact of microaggressions on sexual minorities, cisgender women, and gender minorities—particularly for those with intersecting marginalized identities. This article extends microaggression literature by exploring interrelated constructs of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity microaggressions, and offering recommendations for future research using an intersectional lens to foster an integrated and complex understanding of microaggressions. Implications of an intersectional microaggression framework for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Hardiness and Spiritual Well-Being Among Social Work Students

The challenge today for social work students is how to address the professional and educational demands placed on them as they attend to the development of the whole person. This article reports the findings from a 1994 study of social work students. Data collected from a survey of 105 social work students showed significant relationships among hardiness, spiritual well-being, and self-esteem. Spiritual well-being and hardiness were found to be strong predictors of self-esteem. This article discusses the need to explore the role of spiritual well-being as well as implications for research, practice, and education.     

Advocating the Clinical Social Work Professional Identity: A Biographical Study

Aiming to portray the clinical social work (CSW) professional identity, the present biographical study examines the CSW knowledge and practice domain boundaries as they appear from the perspectives of three Greek mental health social workers who have advocated for the professionalization of CSW. The practitioners' perspectives are studied in relation to their demographic characteristics, education and training, and multidisciplinary relationships. A thematic analysis of the in-depth interviews revealed that these practitioners retained their nuclear social work identity and felt their skills and interests to be different from those endorsed by the present generic social work education and practice system. The study also revealed differences in the educational qualifications and routes that each of the three practitioners followed in order to be able to identify themselves as ‘clinical social workers’. Although the common denominator in the practitioners' perspectives was their training in psychotherapy, the type of psychotherapy training pursued and the experience of personal psychotherapy differentiated each practitioner's ability to theorize on the CSW practice identity. The research data were filtered through a psychodynamic lens to reveal the dynamics of the unconscious processes within the relationships formed between individuals and organizations.     

Engineering Identity: Gender and Professional Identity Negotiation among Women Engineers

This article considers how women in a gendered profession, engineering, construct their professional identity in response to workplace interpersonal interactions that marginalize it. Using data from interviews with women engineers, it also explores how these interactions influence the engineers' sense of self and belonging in engineering. The interpersonal interactions place professional identity on the periphery and can overly validate gender identity. I discuss two types of identity construction strategies employed by the participants in response to these marginalizing interactions: impression management tactics and coping strategies. Although the data demonstrate that participants may be left feeling devalued or ambivalent towards their identity or fit in engineering, some interactions are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. This article also reflects on how the engineers' actions may, in fact, represent forces for change in the gendered culture of engineering.     

Perceptions Among Social Work and Non-Social Work Students Concerning Causes of Poverty

Feagin’s Poverty Scale was used to measure social work students’ and non-social work students’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Present social work students, like previous ones, attribute poverty more to structural factors than individual factors. Further analysis, however, suggests that this may only be true for female and white social work students. Male and nonwhite social work students appear to attribute poverty to both structural and individual factors. White social work students perceive structural factors as more important in causing poverty than white non-social work students. Non-social work students did not overwhelmingly attribute poverty to individualistic factors as expected.     

Educated Caring: The Emergence of Professional Identity Among Nurses

This article examines the formation of occupational identity in a nursing program. The normative and ideological dimensions of this process are revealed in the program’s goals and the views of educators and students through qualitative data from observations and 30 in-depth interviews. Educators seek to socialize students toward professionalism to raise the occupation’s status by emphasizing the scientific and technical basis of nursing. Yet students uphold a gendered discourse by identifying a normative dimension of caring as central to their occupational identity. The dilemma between professionalism and caring is reconciled as students construct an occupational identity based on “educated caring,” where these two dimensions are equally valuable and significant.

Analysing Competence: Gender and Identity at Work

Competence approaches are among the techniques that claim to measure the behaviour, skills, knowledge and understanding crucial to effective managerial performance. It is claimed that competence approaches empower and develop managers while enabling them to meet organizational objectives. Since the bases for the techniques are avowedly scientific, they are said to provide organizations with a gender neutral form of assessment. In this paper we construct a theoretical framework in terms of which these claims can be analysed and assessed. Using this framework, we examine the competence approach as it has been implemented in six organizations in relation to the claim to objectivity.     

Identity,Training, and Expertise Among Sexual Health Professionals

ABSTRACT

The current study explores identity, training, and reported areas of expertise among sexual health professionals. Members of sexual health organizations (n = 500) completed an Internet survey. Personal interest in sexuality best predicted a priori planning to enter the field. Few individuals reported advanced training in sexual health, but those who did reported more mentorship, training satisfaction, and current work hours focused on sexual health. Participants reported more work in sex therapy than in sex education or research. Female and male sexual dysfunction received more professional attention at the expense of specialized topics. To nurture sexual health as a field, more training opportunities, more sex research, more sex education, and more attention to marginalized topics are needed.     

Learning to Be a Social Worker in a Non-traditional Placement: Critical Reflections on Social Work,Professional Identity and Social Work Education in England

Drawing upon findings from a national evaluation of student social workers' experiences of ‘non-traditional’ placements with a national charity, this article considers what such placements can contribute to the development of an individual and collective sense of professional identity for social work. This is explored against the background of current developments in social work education in England, including changes to the requirements for practice placements and the introduction of ‘fast-track’ routes to qualification, preparing students for social work in statutory children's services. The article suggests that with the establishment of The College of Social Work and the development of the Professional Capabilities Framework, relevant to all social workers throughout their careers, the profession has an opportunity to promote a concept of social work in England beyond that required by statutory sector employers; and that practice learning in non-statutory and non-traditional settings has an important role to play in this.     

Commitment to Community Practice Among Social Work Students: Contributing Factors

It is important to develop commitment to community practice among social work students to encourage their engagement in this field as professionals later in life. This research examines factors that affect commitment to community practice among social work students. A structured questionnaire was administered to 277 social work students in one university and one college in Israel. The findings indicate three main factors that explain variance in commitment to community practice: specific self-efficacy for this field, positive experience in a community project during training, and experience with politics. Surprisingly, theoretical studies and support for community work during supervision did not significantly contribute to explanation of commitment to community work. The findings are discussed.     

Sexual Identity,Social Support and Social Networks Among African-, Latino-, and European-American Men in an HIV Prevention Program

On the assumption that effective practice requires knowledge of cultural differences, this study examines the responses of over 400 African-, Latino-, and European-American men seeking services to reduce the risk of HIV infection. The responses of the men to questions about sexual identity, social support, and social networks were compared. Relatively few statistically significant differences were found. Possible confounding conditions as well as the implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Research Attitudes and Their Correlates Among Undergraduate Social Work Students

Efficient and practical means of disseminating research to social workers are needed. The authors examined how 10 social work and 10 other helping profession association websites used their sites to disseminate research to their members. A rubric was used to rate the websites in 4 domains: (1) promotion, (2) accessibility, (3) dissemination, and (4) linkages to credible research information. Findings reveal that online dissemination of research by these professional associations is lacking. Recommendations include use of a prominent research tab on the homepage, inclusion of research syntheses, and links to additional research resources. Professional associations must improve their websites to become the foremost portals by which social workers stay informed of the most current research in their respective practice areas.     

The Integration of Personal and Professional Selves: Developing Students' Critical Awareness in Social Work Practice

How social work students incorporate personal and professional selves in the contexts of field education represents a cornerstone of effective and sustainable practice. This paper presents a qualitative component of a study that tracked 15 third-year bachelor of social work students across their first field placement to document their use of self, critical reflections and experiential learning. The project examined students' assessed ‘use of self’ assignments to understand their capacity for and development of critical awareness across this placement. Students were most articulate in being able to identify stressful situations that arose from placement in terms of what they were thinking (mind) and feeling (emotion) and to a much lesser extent to what they were sensing (body). Over time, students demonstrated a growing critical awareness to better identify and respond to their self-reported tensions. The findings provide developmental insights into how students integrate personal and professional selves and potentially shift from reflective and reflexive practices to incorporating praxis in their work. Through considering the linkages between self and practice, this paper explores student experiences whilst on placement and the associated developmental tasks of critical awareness.     

Perceptions of Self-Care Among MSW Students: Implications for Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

For students new to social work, self-care is a strategy for addressing potentially negative impacts of the profession. Curiously, however, participation in a university’s self-care program has been chronically low. The purpose of this study is to explore social work students’ perceptions of self-care and to create a database for supporting changes in social work education. Qualitative data were collected via an online survey from MSW students. The findings revealed 5 categories for student perceptions of self-care, including health, time, activities, balance, and professionalism, and 3 categories for self-care and the social work program, including academic program experiences, resources, and modeling. Implications of the study in developing and tailoring a self-care program to students in MSW programs are discussed.     

Sexual Minority Women's Gender Identity and Expression: Challenges and Supports

Sexual minority women were divided into four groups to study their gender identities (butch and femme), and gender expression (traditionally gendered and non-traditionally gendered women who do not identify as butch or femme). Experiences of heterosexist events (discrimination, harassment, threats of violence, victimization, negative emotions associated with these events), mental health (self esteem, stress, depression), and supports for a sexual minority identity (social support, outness, internalized homophobia) were examined across these groups. Findings suggested that butch-identified women experienced more heterosexist events than femme women or women with non-traditional gender expressions. There were no differences in mental health variables.     

The Salvaging of Identities among Homeless Men: Reflections for Social Work

Abstract

This research reveals the social and individual processes that dominate the experiences of homeless men through an exploration of their struggle to achieve ontological worth. Drawing on eight in-depth interviews with homeless men who are experiencing homelessness, this research demonstrates this struggle is because of the situated nature of identities that homeless men continually reconstruct and renegotiate. It proposes that relations to this set of identities are relevant to homeless men, in particular the construction and reconstruction of their identities within homelessness. The central findings of this research reveal that homeless men actively manage their identities to cope with the instability inherent to the experience. The implications of this for social work practice are explored, focusing on the importance of self-conception and the restoration of positive identities.     

Professional Commitment in Novice Social Work Students: Socio-Demographic Characteristics,Motives and Perceptions of the Profession

The article attempts to define the characteristics of students at the beginning of their social work studies in institutes of higher education in Israel, including demographic characteristics, motives for choosing the profession, perceptions about the profession, and commitment to the profession. The study was conducted among a sample of 450 students, all beginning their first academic year, at four social work schools in Israel. Study findings show a demographic range, such as: nationality, level of religiosity, and political attitudes. Findings indicate that three of these socio-demographic variables predict commitment to the profession at the onset of academic studies: psychometric score, level of religiosity, and previous academic learning experience.

Findings indicate two profiles of novice students: students who choose to study social work out of a desire to bring about social change; and students who choose to engage only in clinical social work. The latter are not committed to the profession in its essence, but rather recognize the importance of its professional individual activities only. The article discusses these findings and implications with regard to both the social work profession and social work training.     

Placing Gender in Social Work: The Local and National Dimensions of Gender Relations

This paper argues that as well as being sensitive to wider discourses of gender relations, social workers need to consider the ways in which gender is localised. It is argued that to some extent gender practices vary according to local culture, that gendered identities are often localised and that social workers tend to construct their clients according to images of local men and women. These images tend to be stereotypical but some do also reflect dominant local gendered practices. The paper draws on data from qualitative interviews with social workers and probation officers, as well as the experience of teaching social work students, to illustrate these arguments. Whilst it is argued that the localising of gender is of general relevance, the data come from Wales alone. The author's conclusion is that (amongst other things) anti‐oppressive practice involves recognising the important influence of local stereotypes and challenging them, whilst also acknowledging that gendered practices do vary from place to place.     

Economic Hardship and Family-to-Work Conflict: The Importance of Gender and Work Conditions

Using data from a 2007 national survey of working Americans, we examine the association between economic hardship and family-to-work conflict (FWC). We also assess contingencies of this association, focusing particularly on gender and several work conditions. Findings indicate that economic hardship is associated with higher FWC; this pattern is stronger among men. Three work conditions also function as effect modifiers: The positive association between hardship and FWC is stronger for workers with less job authority and more creative work activities. Job pressures also modify this association, but overall, respondents with higher pressures report greater FWC. We discuss how our observations contribute to knowledge about the links between economic conditions and the family–work interface and the importance of status and work-related contingencies.