Life Resources Relating to Social Work Practice

When I graduate from St. Cloud State University in Fall of 2012, I will have a double major in social work and women’s studies. I plan to practice at the macro/social justice level helping people advocate mainly around class and gender issues. I searched “social work class and gender issues at macro level.”

I first searched Google Plain and there were a lot of useful websites relating to advocacy work that needs to be done relating to issues around class and gender. A lot of the issues that women face are class issues because they are amongst the poorest in this country. Keeping up with current legislative decisions is very important as a social worker because your practice is affected by what laws are passed. Google helped me find the latest the news relating to the issues of class and gender, as well a general overview of what class and gender issues are. One of my favorite links that I found was an article called “Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skills.” It is interesting to see what people in the field are doing relating to gender and class issues.

Google Blogs was a little helpful, but there were blogs that only talked about gender issues and blogs that only talked about class issues. As interesting as those blogs were, I wanted more of an intersection between the two of them. One of the blogs,“Privilege and Safety”  was written by a very intelligent woman with macro practice experience; it was refreshing to hear her personal experience in the field so I can kind of get a feel as to what I could go into in the future.

Technorati, Alltop, Google News and Google Groups were not helpful at all in my search. I realize that my search is very specific and these sites were made for more general knowledge.

International Feminism and MultiMedia

When I read the article "Daughters are not for Killing," I was shocked. I do not know a lot about International problems that women face, but I do know that they are different than what women face in the United States. The article was about a women from India who was in love and was about to get married to a man that her parents had not arranged for her. Her parents seemed like they actually did not care whether she married for love or whether they would decide for her.

A few weeks before she was due to be married, her family abducted her and moved her to a different city to keep her from getting married to the man she loved. They family felt that their honor was threatened so they kept her away from him.

Unfortunatly, this happens a lot in country like India where dowry murders are supposedly illegal but continue to happen with no one being punished. Dowry murders are where a young is killed by her family for commiting some "crime" against them such as getting married in secret or having sex before marriage. Dowry murders also includes when a women's husband is killed, it is said that if the widow jumps on a fire and commits suicide it is a sign of great honor. Of course, men are not excepted to do the same when their wives die...