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This article critically explores how feminist theories continue to affect development paradigms and discourses by focusing on women’s experiences in microcredit programs. It locates the ideological roots of key concepts in development theories and feminist thinking about women’s role in development and improving women’s status. Over the past three decades, feminist theories and perspectives have influenced the debates on development across disciplines. Learning from the historical trajectory of development theories and feminist perspectives allows social workers to consider the centrality of gender in shaping every aspect of social life.

Intimate partner abuse (IPA) is a societal issue that continues to devastate individuals, families, and communities worldwide. Historical and current attempts to identify and eradicate IPA provide clues about what is working and what is not. Reflecting on written sources and more than 30 years of professional social service work, the author surveys the major causal theories of IPA and the continued devastating impact of IPA on women, men, and children throughout the world. The author’s practice examples provide a commentary on the implications of IPA for citizens, human service practitioners, and policy makers. Building on the concepts of positive peace building through education and training, the author then challenges and provides suggestions for concrete changes that are necessary to move beyond attitudes and intervention/prevention strategies that continue to send the message that IPA is a personal rather than a societal issue.

Pakistan became highly visible to the West after September 11, 2001, through the many images in the media of women as veiled, submissive, and oppressed by Islam. Most analyses of women in Pakistan have failed to capture the complexity of historical, social, political, and regional factors that bear on gender relations. Through a comprehensive review of the literature and data on human development, the author presents a critical multidimensional analysis of gender issues in Pakistan, with the goal of challenging stereotypes and deepening professional knowledge of global gender issues.

The social work profession, in its efforts to maintain legitimacy and secure its status in the marketplace, perpetuates heteronormative customs that support the suppression of its own lesbian presence. This article describes some of the traditions that have marginalized groups, particularly lesbians, within the profession and calls for a revision of these practices. Recommendations emphasize broadening the theoretical base of the curriculum of professional studies as early as the undergraduate level.

This article examines the ways in which dominant discourses about poor lone mothers are both contested and accommodated among three groups of actors within the workfare system in Toronto, Canada. Drawing on qualitative data from a national research project on lone mothers and social assistance, the authors examine and analyze how lone mothers construct their own subjectivity, as well as how it is constructed by workers in state-contracted nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that deliver job-readiness and related workfare programs and by welfare workers who assess and administer welfare benefits.

Lesbian families are marginalized in contemporary society. Yet, shifting social mores and recent policy changes enable some lesbian couples to adopt children as a couple. Research is lacking about these unique families. The qualitative study presented here extends knowledge about lesbian couples’ internal and social experiences as they become adoptive parents. The findings indicate that these couples face unique challenges to internally held identities and in social relationships. They use, often simultaneously, normalizing and resisting strategies to address the challenges they face. The employment of strategies varies over time and across social contexts, adding to the complexity of tactics that lesbian families use to address heterosexism.

This study examined the gender differences in drug-offer situations of Native Hawaiian youths in rural communities. Youths from seven middle or intermediate schools (N = 194) on the Big Island of Hawai‘i completed a survey that focused on the drug offers they had received. Multivariate and bivariate analyses indicated that the girls received significantly more drug offers than did the boys in the sample and found it more difficult to refuse drugs in such situations. Qualitative data gathered from communities in the survey’s sampling frame elucidated the quantitative findings. Limitations of the study and implications for prevention practice are discussed.

The Urban Studio was initially planned to enhance the pedagogy and curriculum of students in the Department of Interior Architecture through the design and construction of a home for a needy family. This project grew to include faculty and students from the Department of Social Work when the need for a psychosocial perspective was identified. The project resulted in a discovery of the potential benefits of an interdisciplinary endeavor framed by a feminist perspective. It became both a service learning opportunity and a way to make a significant impact by ameliorating a substandard housing structure in a transitional neighborhood.

This article describes the journey of a young Vietnamese immigrant girl, Sandy Dang, who arrived in the United States with no knowledge of the English language or the U.S. educational system. While her parents worked hard to begin their new life in the United States, Sandy was left on her own to navigate the unknown waters. What she needed was a mentor who could help her with schoolwork and with adjusting to life in this country. Now a grown woman and having witnessed many Vietnamese youths traveling the same and confusing journey, Sandy Dang set up an agency, Asian American Leadership, Empowerment, and Development of Youth and Families (AALEAD), to help such youths and their parents transition to American life. Sandy’s vision and agency have helped many of youths who have gone on to have successful careers and who have come back as volunteers to help continue Sandy’s legacy.