A RESPONSE TO DANIS & LOCKHART: WHAT GUIDES SOCIAL WORK KNOWLEDGE ABOUT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN?

Abstract

This article responds to Fran Danis and Lettie Lockhart's editorial in the Summer 2003 Journal of Social Work Education (Vol. 29, No. 2), which questions the disconnect between the battered women's movement and the social work profession regarding knowledge and practices related to domestic violence. The author examines how two factors might influence responses to violence against women: the use of language in the social work discourse and the reluctance to use research to guide social work knowledge and practice. The ways in which these two factors guide social work's ideology about violence against women and, in turn, its focus on individual pathology and treatment and away from social context, social justice, and community organization are explored.