Social Work Studies at a Haredi Women's College: Difficulties and Dilemmas

This paper examines the challenges faced by female Ultra-Orthodox students in a social work program designed for the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel. Findings were obtained from four focus groups with a total of 32 students. The participants reported being exposed to contents that were inconsistent with the perspectives of their community, fieldwork expectations and requirements that violated strict rules of gender separation, and inconvenient scheduling of exams and field trips that did not take their religious observances into consideration. Despite the considerable distress that these matters caused, most of the students made determined efforts to cope, to learn the course material, to carry out their fieldwork assignments, and to reconcile the discrepancies between some of the contents they learned and behaviors that were expected of them and their deeply held values and ways. Implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations made.     

Career Counseling From the Counselee Perspective: Analysis of Feedback Questionnaires

The effectiveness of career counseling as perceived by counselees was measured using evaluation questionnaires. The results showed that 75% of the respondents rated the career counseling they received as satisfactory. A systematic difference was found between satisfaction with counseling as a result of the enhancement of the counselees' personal understanding and satisfaction as a result of the assistance they perceived in decision making. Respondents were more positive concerning their gains in self-understanding than about the help they felt they were given in arriving at a career decision. On the average, counselees rated discussions with the counselor as more important in counseling than were objective tests, interest inventories or vocational information. Respondents who reported that counseling helped them in both their personal and career problems were more satisfied than those who reported being helped solely in either their personal problems or their career decisions. The theoretical and practical implications of these results for career counseling are discussed.     

Sensory language (SDM) to foster empathy in social work students

Assessment and management of emotional situations are generally discussed in academic studies in the field of social work through verbal interventions, while the art of developing awareness to nonverbal feelings has yet to see widespread use. Sensory experience based on nonverbal communication and body language can highlight complex feelings and problems that the social worker confronts. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of an intervention of sensory body language using a modified Sherborne Developmental Movement (SDM) model, in a course for social work students. The course’s multidimensional process involved cognitive and affective components of understanding and identifying thoughts, feelings, and emotional states of others. The intervention combined art activity and focusing to foster empathy among social work students in the group setting. Twenty social work students attending college in the north of Israel participated in the course, writing reflective diaries throughout the course, which were collected and analyzed. The findings suggest that sensory language and movement through the group experience enhanced social work students’ empathy and their awareness of its importance for practice. Learning to be empathic through nonverbal communication also challenged perceived barriers to empathy such as cultural and language differences.     

‘Working fathers' in Japan: Leading a change in gender relations?

Does the emergent phenomenon of ‘working fathers' herald a process of change in gender relations in Japan? Against the background of the current discourse in Japan about new modes of fathers' participation in the family, the article focuses on the small group of working fathers — men who explicitly organize their working lives around family responsibilities — to examine the potentiality of change. This supposed change in the roles of men (and women), at home and in the workplace, is considered in terms of latency, as a ‘slow‐dripping' process. The qualitative research focuses on Fathering Japan, Japan's leading fathering movement, its ideology, its members and their families. The article offers a critical perspective, juxtaposing gender ideology with practice. Exploring the real‐life experiences of working fathers caught between family and work, especially against Japan's gendered corporate culture, the article also addresses the persistence of gender inequality in Japan.     

Mate Selection and Marriage Decision in Bicultural Society: Modern Orthodox Society in Israel

This article addresses courtship and mate selection patterns of young adults who belong to two parallel cultures: traditional and modern. In-depth interviews with 36 Modern-Orthodox Jewish men and women during their first year of marriage reveal unique considerations for mate selection and the dynamic flow between cultural systems. The findings show that dating is marriage-oriented but within a modern context. Although the study participants used modern tools and concepts, the marriage decision itself was bound to strict social norms and traditional expectations. The decision was based largely on rational reasoning, whereas love and personal needs were rarely discussed. The findings highlight the challenges faced by couples with bicultural identity in their transition to matrimony and can support professionals in addressing these conflicts.     

The Iraqi Kurds: The struggle for autonomy in the shadow of the Iran‐Iraqi conflict

This article examines the intricate relationship between the Kurds of Iraq and the Iraqi‐Iranian conflict. In the final analysis, the Kurds were both a major beneficiary but at the same time also the major losers from it. This situation became manifest during the Iraqi‐Iranian war which started in September 1980 and ended in August 1988.

Hoping to manipulate the war in order to achieve a meaningful autonomy, the Kurds both received support from Iran and lent it their own in the fighting against Iraq. But at the end of the war, Iran dropped its erstwhile allies, who once again found themselves between hammer and anvil. The punishment which the government meted to the Kurdish movement and the Kurdish population in general was unprecedented in its harshness and totality. The Kurdish hopes for a meaningful autonomy were dashed.     

Density does not help: Help-giving,help-seeking and help-reciprocating of residents of high and low student dormitories

The present study explored self-reports of male and female students living in high-rise or low dormitories regarding their help-giving, help-seeking and help-reciprocating behaviors. Helping relations were studied in behaviors involving exchange of money, services and emotional support. Students living in low dormitories indicated more willingness to give and seek help and less need to reciprocate a favor than students living in high dormitories. Also, only helping responses of students living in high dormitories were affected by the state of need for help. The conceptual and applied implications of these findings are discussed.Requests for reprints should be sent to Arie Nadler, Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Israel.     

Measuring inequality of opportunity with imperfect data: the case of Turkey

The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey (DHS) and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the DHS, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the DHS. In both cases, we compute a lower bound estimator of the share of (ex-ante) inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for each method, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30–49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26% (31%) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index).