Abstract
Women’s Issues for a New Generation attempts to be an introductory and all-encompassing text on women and feminism for social work students. Gail Ukockis provides an overview of several focus areas including women’s history, beauty standards, lesbian and bisexual women, intimate partner violence, and global feminism. A text for social work students on feminism(s) is indeed a dire need; however, Women’s Issues for a New Generation unfortunately follows a framework and trajectory similar to the pitfalls of second-wave feminism. Major concerns abound throughout the text, from a lack of definitions and clear focus, to a reproduction of oppressive frameworks, to ultimately the lack of an emphasis on critical social work practice. As a result, the text appears outdated; it is devoid of the current sociopolitical context of new terms for identities, processes, and possibilities; the expansion of feminisms in mainstream outlets; and the crucial need to de-center white feminism.
Women’s Issues for a New Generation has a goal of being an accessible text, avoiding excessive theory and rich in “real-life issues that affect our daily lives: our jobs, our families, and ourselves” (p. 6). While this is the stated goal, it is difficult to recognize whether the focus is on “women’s lives,” feminism, or gender. Ukockis negates each of these focus areas. She includes an explicit focus on men’s lives in some of the chapters, such as describing beauty standards for men, and states that “every women’s issue is really everybody’s issue” (p. 4). Likewise, she uses the word feminism repeatedly without defining which feminism she is employing and erroneously conflates “women’s lives” as synonymous with feminism. Also, the text does not offer details or consistent discussion about the construction of gender. Overall, the exact purpose of the text remains unclear.
Likewise, a glaring absence is the lack of inclusion of social work within the text. Social work practice is not embedded within the main text and neither feminist nor women social workers are highlighted. Social work students would benefit from learning about the work of individual social workers, such as Mary Church Terrell, Edith Abbott, and Dorothy Height, as well as the rich history of feminist social work practice. The target audience of social work readers is referenced inconsistently and typically through discussion questions in only some chapters. Therefore, a consistent question is how to apply this information to social work practice. While Ukockis is intentionally theory adverse in the text, a framework of critical theory with attention to antioppressive practice and postmodernism is needed. For example, while Ukockis discusses the need for contraception as a “development issue” (p. 326) without discussing a reproductive justice framework. Additionally, social work students would benefit from understanding how different types of feminism may inform and facilitate practice.
Women’s Issues for a New Generation had the potential to be a sourcebook for an array of resources for social workers. However, Ukockis often cites blog posts that are typically negative examples of hate-filled speech and gross stereotypes or asks readers to find negative examples (e.g., her assignment for readers to find an “Angry Black Woman” [p. 251]). Readers could benefit from insight on how to promote positive social change and resources for innovative models of practice. Likewise, without grounding the text in theories that allow for complexity and nuance, Ukockis provides a surface read that skates close to offensive and insensitive text. For example, she structures a section on “What is a lesbian?” into describing only two types of lesbians: “primary (identifying since early childhood) and elective” (p. 86). Given a reference used in this section is from 1987, Ukockis neglects to include the development of a more complex understanding of sexuality and sexual identities that has occurred within recent decades and reinforces debunked simplistic stereotypes.
Ukockis provides readers who are social work instructors with guidance to center a social work course in her sections on “Women in the United States” and “Women in the International Context,” with her chapters on “Diversity” as “self-study” (p. 6). This framing is troubling; women in the United States are woven into the “international context,” and diversity must not be merely additive and optional.
A persistent question over the past decades and in the current climate is “does feminism matter?” and the field of social work has not been and is not immune to this question. Women’s Issues for a New Generation pinpoints the need for feminism(s) within social work and the need for enhanced educational materials on the lives of women across the globe.