Journeys of disorientation & dislocation: Women/invisible dis/ability in and out of social work. A transdisciplinary exploration.

Research question: Please describe your experience of invisible illness/ dis/ ability and what this has meant to you both professionally and personally. This is a qualitative, exploratory study in which six women (including myself) who work/have worked within the social work profession, responded to the research question employing an online-email method. I developed a variety of self-monitoring questions to assist the process. These questions were designed to be used as conversational prompts only if necessary, and to make up for absence of face-to-face contact. The participants were found using a snowball sample. This research is an exploration of female social workers' experiences with invisible illness/dis/abilty. Specifically, the study explores the intersections and subjectivity of a variety of women's oppressions, including socialization, media/body image, sexual identity, and aging in relation to the effects of gender violence and women's health, sense of well being, and social worker retention in rural, isolated, and northern communities. Gender violence will be understood to include a continuum of violence extending from economic coercion to outright physical abuse. I explored the possibilities (and potential linkages) that there may or may not be a relationship between women's previous experiences of marginalization and oppression, including trauma, abuse, neglect, poverty, and abandonment, which might increase the likelihood of further such experiences within a social work setting, and that gender violence is contrary to social worker retention, specifically in rural, isolated, and northern communities ...This may include that women position or allow themselves to be positioned in social work environments paradoxically to re-encounter such situations that would not likely be experienced in other non-caring, or traditionally male professions. Our choices are shaped by our structural contexts and vice versa. Our choices are also influenced by subconscious and subtle dynamics. More specifically, in