Miriam L. Freeman

Film Portrayals of Social Workers Doing Child Welfare Work

This article reports on research that investigated the images of social workers engaged in child welfare work as portrayed in movies, a major medium of popular culture. Findings from an analysis of 27 movies spanning from 1938 to 1999 are presented with particular attention to themes about how children are depicted as recipients of child welfare services and how child welfare worker activities and interventions are portrayed. Ways that the results of the research can guide intervention efforts that more accurately and more completely portray the activities, values, and knowledge base of the profession of social work are suggested.

Finding Joy in Social Work: Interpersonal Sources

Despite the social work professions strengths orientation, research on its workforce tends to focus on problems (e.g., depression, problem drinking, compassion fatigue, and burnout). In contrast, this study explored ways in which social workers find joy in their work. We used an appreciative inquiry approach, semistructured interviews (n = 26), and a collaborative grounded theory method of analysis. Participants identified interpersonal (making connections and making a difference) and intrapersonal (making meaning and making a life) sources of joy and reflected significant personal initiative in the process of finding joy. The focus of this article is on the interpersonal sources of joy of making connections and making a difference. We discuss implications for social work practice.

Pay Equity and Social Work

During the 1980s, pay equity emerged as a major employment and economic issue. Pay equity is proposed as one solution to the gap in wages between white men, women, and men of color. There is an abundance of information on this issue, but little attention has been paid to it in the social work literature. This article discusses the relevance of pay equity for social work and suggests strategies for achieving it.

A Re-Membering Conversation With Howard Goldstein

Howard Goldstein (1922-2000) was a renowned social work educator and author. He was also my teacher. This article is a re-membering “conversation” between Howard and me, based on papers I wrote in his classes in 1972-73 and his written responses to them. In narrative therapy, remembering conversations acknowledge and privilege contributions of significant people to a persons preferred identity and life story. In this article I celebrate Howards rich and continuing contributions to my life as a social worker and educator and suggest that these contributions remain vitally relevant to social work practice today.

Book Reviews : Gender Inequality at Work. Edited by Jerry A. Jacobs. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995, 438 pp.,

(p. ix). In Straus’s opinion, this phenomenon is due &dquo;in no small part to male domination and [to] the economic, social, and political inequity that stems from it&dquo; (p. ix). Yet, in the analyses, Straus does not adequately examine the impact of the male socialization process on the development of attitudes and behavior that lead to violent solutions or discuss specific ways to affect the inequality that stems from male domination. If male domination is one of the root causes of