Denise McLane-Davison

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly overwhelming for communities of color in the United States. In addition to the higher levels of underlying health conditions, circumstances related to a history of oppression and unequal access to opportunities and services are apparent. Social service programs will need to be re-developed to accommodate a new reality, both in terms of how people connect with services and how social work professionals provide them. Professional social work organizations’ codes of ethics are analyzed, along with the theoretical framework of structural competency. It is an ethical imperative that social welfare policy and practice advance as culturally competent, racial equity, and empowerment-based programs. Child welfare is portrayed as an example where the pandemic could provide an opportunity to learn from the past to construct a more compassionate, competent, and ethical future.

ABSTRACT Academic literature exploring the experiences and needs among women in the social work professorate has yet to explore the ways in which work-life and family-life are compatible, including work-life enrichment and job satisfaction. To remedy this empirical gap, the current descriptive exploratory study of 504 female tenure-track social work academics investigates components essential to job satisfaction, which are also important to work-life enrichment. A particular emphasis is placed on differences and similarities between women who have dependent children (e.g., under 18 and in the home), women who have adult children, and women who have no children. Data were collected using an on-line survey of social work faculty working at CSWE accredited programs. Variables explored include professional connectedness, workplace empowerment, career satisfaction, and stress. The most salient finding is that having dependent children is not a detriment to factors essential for successful work-life enrichment and job satisfaction, even though overall stress is higher. The three groups have more similarities than differences. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are addressed.

ABSTRACT Duoethnography offers the narratives of first-generation Black women scholars who created a virtual community as a transformative safe space for peer mentorship and scholarship. Framed through a womanist epistemological lens, our narratives provide insight about challenges and triumphs of navigating the academy from female scholars of African descent. Unique to this chronicle, the development of an Accountability Sistah Circle in 2012 became an organic transformative community for personal and professional growth. Through the components of this model, which can be implemented with others living in the margins, we uncovered our authentic voices, shared resources, expanded social capital, and developed a ritual that provided a safety shield around us and ultimately helped enhance our academic fortitude.

Abstract:Black feminist epistemology and phenomenological inquiry frame a recently published research study (McLane-Davison, 2016) that offers an intimate snapshot of the lives of ten pioneering community health leaders fighting for health justice. The leadership characteristics of these women embodies a similar commitment to community and human rights as the nineteenth century, Black Women’s Club movement (Gilkes, 2001), as well as, the nineteen sixties Civil Rights (Abdullah, 2007), and Black Power (Hill-Collins, 2006) movements. When HIV/AIDS emerged, it was yet another reason to advocate for the survival of their communities. As an organic space of safety, the family kitchen is where intergenerational knowledge and collective identity(Beoku-Betts, 1995) provide valuable key ingredients for developing an “advocacy spirit” of Black feminist leadership (Abdullah, 2007; Hill-Collins, 2007; McLane-Davison, 2016) . Being “at the table,” where decisions were made, was both necessary and obligatory for addressing the inequities of resources and health outcomes. The findings of this phenomenological study revealed the characteristics of Black feminist leadership in HIV/AIDS community work (McLane-Davison, 2013; 2016). This article answers one of the key research questions: “What value, if any, do Black women bring to the fight against HIV/AIDS?” Black feminist leadership posits that liberation is always a topic when Black women gather. Their intergenerational strategy of “stirring the pot of justice” offers innovative and liberating approaches for sustaining healthier communities.

ABSTRACT Standing on the hope of the initial social work course from 1914 at Morgan College, this article provides insight into the significant learning outcomes of contemporary students in advanced social work practice with urban African American families. This research introduces the conceptual framework of urban womanist social work pedagogy as an inclusive practice-informed knowledge produced through the rituals, traditions, values, culture, and resilience of historically disenfranchised communities. Urban womanist social work teaching methods honor truth telling from the ones who have lived there. Urban womanist social work affirms transformative-centered research, teaching, and scholarship produced through institutions such as historically black colleges and universities (HBCU’s). The students’ reflective narratives reveal a process of transformation, centered in the freedom standpoint, which includes recognizing the location and context of their individual and collective identity as African Americans in the profession of social work. Urban womanist social work pedagogy cumulatively equips our students with intergenerational knowledge that inform their assessment of critical issues in Baltimore’s African American communities.

This phenomenological study captured the unique perspectives and insight of how 10 black women experience and define leadership in their HIV/AIDS community work. Black feminist epistemology provided the framework for understanding how these women experienced leadership at the intersection of race/gender/power while working on behalf of marginalized and stigmatized community members. Salient themes that emerged from the analysis include leadership is situational and contextual, leadership is inclusive and collective, intent is more important than label, leadership is transformative, leadership is scrutinized, and power is centered in mothering relationships. Their leadership builds on the efforts of the liberation and racial uplift work of the 19th-century Black Women’s Club Movement and emerged as black feminist leadership to address the contemporary social injustice of HIV/AIDS.

Mechanisms of oppression that serve to subordinate the strengths, knowledge, experiences, and needs of women in families, communities, and societies to those of men are at the root of gender inequality. Grounded in the strengths perspective of social work, the basic premise of the present discussion emphasizes gender equality as opposed to inequality. At the core of gender equality is the value of womanhood and the need to ensure the health and well-being of women and girls. Women’s participation in different societal domains including economic opportunities, political empowerment, educational attainment, health, and well-being are all impacted by their roles. Thus, structural weaknesses are major barriers for reforming efforts on global gender equality. Challenging traditional notions of gender, which is defined as behavioral, cultural, and social characteristics that are linked to womanhood or manhood, is the basis for achieving gender equality by attending to how these characteri...

Preface Foreword Acknowledgments Section 1: Navigating Troubled Waters: Doing Womanhood in Work Life 1. Learning to Swim with the Barracudas: Negotiating Differences in the Workplace Nia I. Cantey 2. Mammies, Maids &Mothers: Representations of African-American and Latina Women's Reproductive Labor in Weeds Johnanna Ganz 3. Being Black Academic Mothers Angela K. Lewis, Sherri L. Wallace, and Clarissa L. Peterson Section 2: Too Grown for Your Own Good: Doing Girlhood 4. Combing My Kinks: A Culturally Informed Program to Strengthen Mother-Daughter Relationships Marva L. Lewis and Allisyn L. Swift 5. The ABCs of Doing Gender: Culturally Situated Non-Cognitive Factors & African American Girls LaShawnda Lindsay-Dennis and Lawanda Cummings 6. Learning Black Womanhood: An Autoethnography Denise Davis-Maye Section 3: Turpentine, Sugar, and Pot Liquor: Black Women and Everyday Health 7. Growing Up Black and Female: Life Course Transitions and Depressive Symptoms Claire Norris and Paige Mi...

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL ~\ ORK MCLANE-DAVISON, DENISE B.S.W. ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY, 1985 A.M. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 1987 AN EXPLORATORY PHENOMFNOLOGI~LSIUDY OF BLACK FEMINIST LEADERSHIP IN HIV/AIDS COMMUNITY WORK Advisor: Santa K. Davis, Ph.D. Dissertation dated May 2010 While black women have historically addressed issues of social injustice in the black community, their leadership in the fight against HIV AIDS has been largely overlooked. IIIV AIDS is a leading health disparity for black women ages 25 to 44. While other populations have seen a decline in their rates of infection since the early 1 990s, the rates of infection for black women have consistently increased (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). Black women’s leadership in HIV/AIDS community work has been understudied as a viable means of engagement in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The intersection of race and gender, as described in black feminist thought. may influence black women’s leadership development and...

In the 21st Century context of violent racial divides, dismantling racism in social work education requires deep trust that social transformation and healing is possible. “Wringing out the whitewash” metaphorically captures the heavy labor of interrupting the rigid Eurocentric epistemological hegemony undergirding the pedagogy, research, and praxis canons of social work. It requires rigorous attempts to unsettle and decenter entrenched white supremacist ideology, assumptions, and values. In this labor, we create space for the multiple identities and worldviews that students and professors occupy to reshape educational encounters. In this paper, we present our critical pedagogical approaches as Black social work educators committed to liberation and healing. We articulate how our positionalities as Black cisgender women at urban universities, one a Northeastern Historically Black College and University (HBCU) and another at a Northeastern public university, facilitate our intentions ...

Community policing is grounded in a set of knowledge and skills that promotes a collaborative relationship between community residents, law enforcement, public and private industry, and governing elected officials to achieve safe and sustainable communities. In the fall of 2016, on the heels of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s Investigative Report, a cohort of Morgan State University’s School of Social Work faculty, trained in the results-based accountability (RBA) model, developed and implemented an interactive workshop on cultural competency with 70 community partners from law enforcement. Cultural competence is an inherit cornerstone of a viable community and police partnership. This article shares how outcome-based performance strategies such as RBA can facilitate a pathway for enhancing community generational cultural competence leading to public safety.

Community policing is grounded in a set of knowledge and skills that promotes a collaborative relationship between community residents, law enforcement, public and private industry, and governing elected officials to achieve safe and sustainable communities. In the fall of 2016, on the heels of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division's Investigative Report, a cohort of Morgan State University's School of Social Work faculty, trained in the results-based accountability (RBA) model, developed and implemented an interactive workshop on cultural competency with 70 community partners from law enforcement. Cultural competence is an inherit cornerstone of a viable community and police partnership. This article shares how outcome-based performance strategies such as RBA can facilitate a pathway for enhancing community generational cultural competence leading to public safety.

ABSTRACT
Standing on the hope of the initial social work course from 1914 at
Morgan College, this article provides insight into the significant learning
outcomes of contemporary students in advanced social work
practice with urban African American families. This research introduces
the conceptual framework of urban womanist social work pedagogy as
an inclusive practice-informed knowledge produced through the
rituals, traditions, values, culture, and resilience of historically disenfranchised
communities. Urban womanist social work teaching methods
honor truth telling from the ones who have lived there. Urban
womanist social work affirms transformative-centered research, teaching,
and scholarship produced through institutions such as historically
black colleges and universities (HBCU’s). The students’ reflective narratives
reveal a process of transformation, centered in the freedom
standpoint, which includes recognizing the location and context of
their individual and collective identity as African Americans in the
profession of social work. Urban womanist social work pedagogy
cumulatively equips our students with intergenerational knowledge
that inform their assessment of critical issues in Baltimore’s African
American communities.

Mechanisms of oppression that serve to subordinate the strengths, knowledge, experiences, and needs of women in families, communities, and societies to those of men are at the root of gender inequality. Grounded in the strengths perspective of social work, the basic premise of the present discussion emphasizes gender equality as opposed to inequality. At the core of gender equality is the value of womanhood and the need to ensure the health and well-being of women and girls. Women’s participation in different societal domains including economic opportunities, political empowerment, educational attainment, health, and well-being are all impacted by their roles. Thus, structural weaknesses are major barriers for reforming efforts on global gender equality. Challenging traditional notions of gender, which is defined as behavioral, cultural, and social characteristics that are linked to womanhood or manhood, is the basis for achieving gender equality by attending to how these characteristics govern the relationship between women and men and the power differences that impact choices and agency to choose. Further, both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are imperative for achieving gender equality among women and girls. Although progress has been made toward gender equality for many women, lower income women—as well as women who face social exclusion stemming from their caste, disability, location, ethnicity, and sexual orientation––have not experienced improvements in gender equality to the same extent as other women. Broad outcomes of gender equality around the globe include decreased poverty, increased social and economic justice, and better well-being and empowerment among men and women. Gender equality is a smart tool for economic development because it can remove barriers to access and enhance productivity gains in a competitive world

This phenomenological study captured the unique perspectives and insight of how 10 Black women experience and define leadership in their HIV/AIDS community work. Black feminist epistemology provided the framework for understanding how these women experienced leadership at the intersection of race/gender/power while working on behalf of marginalized and stigmatized community members. Salient themes that emerged from the analysis include: Leadership is Situational and Contextual, Leadership is Inclusive and Collective, Intent is more important than Label, Leadership is Transformative, Leadership is Scrutinized and Power is Centered in Mothering Relationships. Their leadership builds on the efforts of the liberation and racial uplift work of the 19th century Black Women’s Club Movement and emerged as Black feminist leadership to address the contemporary social injustice of HIV/AIDS.

While black women have historically addressed issues of social injustice in the black community, their leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS has been largely overlooked. HIV/AIDS is a leading health disparity for black women ages 25 to 44. While other populations have seen a decline in their rates of infection since the early 1990s, the rates of infection for black women have consistently increased (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). Black women’s leadership in HIV/AIDS community work has been understudied as a viable means of engagement in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The intersection of race and gender, as described in black feminist thought. may influence black women’s leadership development and how they impact certain social issues such as HIV/AIDS. This exploratory research study includes a snowball sampling of black women leaders involved in HIV/AIDS community work. Through semi-structured interviews the researcher gained insightful knowledge about how black women experience leadership in their HIV/AIDS work in the face of the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic amongst black women. The results add to contemporary descriptions of leadership, place black women’s leadership in its historical context, and helps us to better understand how gender and race impact leadership.