Publishing Feminist, Intersectionality Research in Social Work

This workshop includes a panel of five members from the Affilia editorial board, who have a range of expertise in employing feminist theories and methodologies in social work scholarship. Affilia: The Journal of Social Work and Women was established in 1986 as the first (and still only) peer-reviewed journal that is dedicated to feminist theories, values, and knowledge as they relate to social work and social welfare research, education, and practice.

During this interactive workshop, we will consider the potential for intersectionality scholarship in social work to build upon the history of Black radical and post-colonial feminism to draw attention to overlapping and mutually reinforcing oppressions (Samuels and Ross-Sheriff, 2008), shed light on intersectional lives that have for too long been erased from social work research and education (Eravelles and Minear, 2010), and offer pathways to resist the marginalization of critical scholarship within social work (Bhuyan, 2018).

We will begin with an illustration of intersectionality scholarship from Affilia's editorial board members who will prepare brief remarks on the following topics: 1) Participatory research with Black girls to address systemic inequality, 2) The psychological and emotional violence of discrimination experienced by racialized immigrants,3) Historical scholarship on gender and US immigration policy, 4) Feminist evaluation within smaller non-profits and programs, and 5) Policy analysis of the production of deportability and gender-based violence for immigrants with precarious status.

The panel will then invite discussion on strategies for a) categorical, anti-categorical vs. intracategorical research design, b) participatory and action research methods, c) intersecting oppressions within gender “neutral” policies and practices, and d) the ethics and politics of representation in intersectional scholarship, and e) designing measurement tools that can highlight the individual contexts with evaluation designs. We invite discussion regarding the training and mentoring of feminist scholarship within academia and its influence on social work practice.

The workshop outcomes will include an assessment of the barriers to participants undertaking feminist epistemological and methodological approaches within social work research.