Access to Social Work, a quarterly journal co-published by NASW Press and Oxford University Press, is one of the benefits of membership with NASW. For a small additional fee, members can also access articles from NASW’s other journals, Children & Schools, Health & Social Work, and Social Work Research.
Periodically we highlight a selected article from these journals to showcase the excellent scholarship and research they feature.
Below is an excerpt from the most recent issue of Social Work, from an article titled “Community Organization and Empowerment of Women: The Mujeres Pescadoras del Manglar Cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico”:
“In the Oaxaca region of Mexico machismo, for sociohistorical reasons, is deeply rooted and subjugates women, confining them to a social position of impotence, relegated to home life and child-rearing. The population mainly comprises people of indigenous and African descent, among whom women’s participation is even lower than in the mestizo (multiracial White and indigenous) population. The violence that indigenous and Afro-descendant women suffer saddles them with low self-esteem, and they have few opportunities for social recourse if dealing with an abusive partner. This is the context in El Zapotalito, located in the Lagunas de Chacahua National Park, in the state of Oaxaca, where in 2014 a cooperative of fisherwomen was founded thanks to a program aimed at empowering women, implemented by La Ventana civic association. Today the cooperative stands out nationally as the first among indigenous and Afro-descendant fisherwomen. The focus of this article is labor by women as a tool for their empowerment in terms of their self-esteem and emotional well-being.…”
The article was written by:
- Ilaria Sartini, MA, doctoral candidate, Universidad de Huelva, Venezia, Italy
- Francisco Caravaca Sánchez, PhD, assistant professor doctor, Department of Psychology, Area of Social Work and Social Services, Almería University, Spain
You can find out more about the journals and subscriptions at this link.
