Challenging gender roles: The impact on female social work students of working with abused women

This article presents findings of a phenomenological study exploring how gender roles of social work students are affected through the process of intervention with battered women. We suggest that such intervention continuously challenges the worker to reexamine identity-related topics. The study was done through in-depth semistructured interviews conducted with 20 Israeli female undergraduate students, both Jewish and Arab. Their narratives revealed how encounters with battered women shape their experiences in domains such as family of origin, current intimate relationships, and gender attitudes. The meanings of the transformed narratives for the students are discussed along with implications for social work supervision and practice.