Abstract
When Christine Flynn Saulnier and I started our tenure as the coeditors of Affilia in fall 2006, we declared our intention to build upon the vision of the founding mothers of Affilia within the context of global changes that were occurring during the first decade of the 21st century. That vision was a journal that would provide space for feminists in the academy to examine the serious challenges that women were facing. Women academicians found that they could not get their manuscripts on feminist issues, such as unequal pay, tenure, and promotion; the glass ceiling; and violence against women published in social work journals. The voices of feminist social work practitioners and academicians who examined the challenges that women face in their day-to-day lives at home and in the workplace and who interpreted their research from feminist perspectives were absent in professional journals. Therefore, the founding mothers developed their vision to encourage scholarship, to enable the publication of articles on social work practice and social welfare from feminist lenses, and to promote theories that helped gain an understanding of and advance women’s causes in racial, ethnic, professional, geographic, and sexual orientation matters.
Christine and I noted in 2006 that although there had been changes in social work professional and publication networks in the first years of the 21st century, many of the problems that motivated the founders still remained. Thus, we made a commitment to publish articles that would reflect the vision of the founding mothers, including the first group that served on the editorial board of Affilia and the first five editors in chief (see Table 1).
Affilia Founding Mothers and Editors in Chief
We also sought to foster a broader concept of globalization that seemed limited for social work to (1) international social work, (2) comparative analyses of social work practices and social welfare policies among nations, and (3) comparative analyses of women’s positions and women’s concerns in different nations. The emerging broader concept encompasses challenges that women and feminist practice face, including the impact of globalization on social work, transnational and multilateral social work, translocal networks, the impacts of global changes on women’s lives, the need for global regulation, and hybrid forms of practice that combine elements from the private and public sectors and result in opportunities as well as challenges for women. Transnational social work requires investments in research, practice, and analyses of institutional functions, as well as intricate connections of international and local organizations and advocacy at all levels. Transnational social work also calls for an understanding of the challenges facing women who migrate—within their countries and internationally, with or without their families—and who then must work within cultures and communities in their new location that are very different from their cultures of origin. Social workers need to analyze policies and practices that support or exploit these migrants in their homes and in their workplaces, in governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and in a wide variety of vocations from menial labor to domestic servant to professional fields requiring the highest technical knowledge and skills.
This more complex concept of the opportunities and challenges that women face, as well as understanding and advocacy from feminist perspectives, are indeed reflected in the articles that have been published in Affilia over the past 6 years of our editorship. Numerous articles have addressed traditional issues of domestic violence and the continuing lack of equity in the workplace, including academic institutions. At the same time, several articles have addressed complex concerns that stem from migration, globalization, and issues of social justice for women in the United States and in other countries of the world.
We also made a commitment to continue to support the development of the social work knowledge base regarding third-wave feminist theories, with a special effort to include the perspectives of feminists from the developing world and from social work’s allied disciplines. While we had to depend on the submission of articles, we attempted to include content that reflected our vision and feminist concerns of our time through the editorials. Several editorials, beginning with our first—“Feminists in the Academy”—and ending with the most recent––“Microaggressions,” have highlighted the challenges facing women nationally and globally. Editorials that focused on our concerns included these:
Feminists in the Academy,
On Theorizing (In)Equity of Women in Social Work,
On Identity, Oppression, and Power: Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory,
On Wall Street Taking Welfare It Begrudges to Women,
On Gentle Angry Women Creating Change,
Transnational Social Work and Lessons Learned from Transnational Feminism,
Beyond the Binary: Critical Feminisms in Social Work,
Unsettling Feminisms,
Remembering the Women: Inequality Is a Women’s Issue,
Transnational Cross-Racial Surrogacy: Issues and Concerns,
Aging and Gender, Feminist Theory, and Social Work Practice Concerns,
Women and Political Leadership: The U.S. and the Global Context,
Do Our Life Experiences Augment Our Understanding? Reflections on Justice: Sonia Sotomayor’s Congressional Hearings, and
Micro Aggression, Women, and Social Work.
We also worked with the editorial board to revive the columns On Practice, On the Bias, Past and Present, and Women Creating Change, for which we were getting few submissions. The column editors solicited articles that promoted the vision. Two special achievements during our tenure were a special issue on feminism guest-edited by Christina Gringeri and Susan Roche, and a conference, Unsettling Feminisms, organized by Women and Social Work, Inc., also referred to as the Corporate Board of Affilia and the Affilia Editorial Board.
Several times during the 6 years, upon recommendation of the editorial board, we have also continued the practice of Beatrice Saunders, the founding mother of Affilia, and continued by Miriam Dinerman of having all editorial board members read one article before the board meeting and come prepared to review and critique the article with specific suggestions of how to transmit the comments helpfully to the authors (Bernard, Dinerman, & Sancier, 1999). The practice also helps board members to develop their abilities for nurturing and compassionate editorial reviews and comments.
To assess our consistency with the vision of the Affilia founders and the focus on ethnicity and the globalization aspects of social work, we enumerated the articles in the six volumes of Affilia (Winter 2007 to Fall 2012) against three categories of topics—ethnicity, globalism, and feminist theories—as is shown in Table 2.
Affilia Articles by Topic Category by Year
As may be seen from the analysis of the publications, we have made advances in the publication of articles on ethnicity reflecting issues of concern for African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American women and on global–international categories and feminist theories. Affilia continues to be a source of the feminist and women-centered understanding of opportunities and challenges for women for social work practice and theory in the United States and across the world.
Academic journals are ranked by their Impact Factor (IF), which is the average number of citations of recent Affilia articles published in social science journals. Affilia’s IF has increased to .649, and it is now ranked among the top 50% of the journals in the social work and women’s studies categories. This ranking has been achieved by the outstanding work of editorial board members, corporate board members, and consulting editors (see Table 3) who have given their time to review manuscripts constructively, providing detailed positive comments to authors to encourage feminist scholarship and meet the highest quality of communication. The ranking is also due to authors across the world recognizing that their work and ideas are consistent with the vision that is the foundation of Affilia.
Members of the Editorial Board, Corporate Board, and Consulting Editors During the Past 6 Years
This is my final editorial for Affilia as editor in chief, and I thank the visionary women of the journal’s editorial board for being a constant source of inspiration. I am especially grateful to Christine Flynn Saulnier, coeditor for 5 years, who worked with me through difficult decisions; Noel Busch-Armendariz, coeditor for the past year; and Wendy Almeleh, who has been the copy editor since the beginning of Affilia in 1986. Almeleh’s meticulous review of all the materials printed in Affilia, and all the work of the editorial board, have made Affilia a profound embodiment of feminist principles. Last and most important, I express my special appreciation to two groups of people. First, I would like to thank a few people at Sage (1) the Sage Publications copy editors and support staff—Leah Fargotstein, editor of social science journals; Natalie Jay, publishing editor; Leah Jennifer Carlson, peer review specialist; and Amanda Richardson, editorial assistant—who have worked diligently on the publication of Affilia throughout the past 6 years, and to the staff of Scholar One for their assistance in getting Affilia online. Second, I thank Dr. Cudore Snell, the dean of Howard University’s School of Social Work, and Dr. Sandra Crewe, the associate dean; Jean Petaway, my administrative assistant for her unwavering support; and Maria Gomes, Ronya Foy, and Elma Kaiser, my graduate assistants, who have given invaluable support for the past 6 years. With our next issue, I welcome Noel Busch-Armendariz as the editor in chief and Debora Ortega, as the coeditor, who will begin with our best wishes and enormous confidence that they will ensure Affilia’s continued success.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
Affilia maintains high standards of publication and timeliness, thanks, in large part, to the efforts of members of the editorial board, corporate board, consulting editors, and copy editor. We hereby acknowledge their contributions to Affilia and thank them for their reviews and contributions to feminist scholarship (see 
).