The aim of the current study was to examine how females survive natural disaster in non-western culture and to gain understanding of their unique experiences in rebuilding their lives. In September 1999, a major earthquake, named '921 Earthquake,' measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale occurred in Taiwan. Many people survived, struggling a great deal in their efforts to reconstruct their lives. Five years after this earthquake, many survivors, including women, were reported to have rebuilt self-sufficient lives. Given the vulnerability of women and their greater difficulties in resuming their lives, an important question was how these women were able to be successful in this endeavor. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, 16 female 921 Earthquake survivors who had been helped by social workers, no longer received government aid and had successfully regained their selfsufficiency, voluntarily participated in this study. The study findings revealed that the coping strategies guided by female gender norms in the family, embedded in Taiwanese culture, including: children's needs are the first priority as a maternal role norm; men working outside and women working inside; and female gender norms of supporting the family when husbands could not, were the major resources participants accessed and utilized to successfully cope with the difficulties after the 921 Earthquake. The participants' narratives demonstrated that cultural norms can serve as coping resources for survivors. Implications for social work practice are addressed.
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This study investigates risk and protective factors of Taiwanese female students who dropped out of high school. Twenty female youth who had dropped out of high school and who grew up and resided in Taiwan voluntarily participated in this study. Findings revealed particular relational conflicts and coping strategies employed by the girls that contributed to significant vulnerability, conflict at school and school dropout. Implications for social work practice are addressed.
As social work continues to develop in many non-Western countries and immigration continues to be a global phenomenon, there is an increasing need to provide services to diverse populations and to develop culturally appropriate social work practice (Cheung and Liu, 2004;Kee, 2004). This has resulted in the need to examine theories that have their foundation in Western culture and are biased by Western experience. One such theory is self-in-relation theory, which has recently become a central theory in feminist practice, as a useful means for understanding women's personality/ identity development. Unlike traditional developmental psychology, 'the notion of Self-in-Relation involves an important shift in emphasis from separation to relationship as the basis for self-experience and development' (Surrey, 1991: 53). The basis of self-in-relation theory is that the self is organized and developed through practice in relationships, and the central organizing concept of human development is to develop empathic relationships. As Surrey (1991) writes, 'The self-in-relation theory begins to sketch a development model to account for the development of empathic competencies in women, beginning with the early mother-daughter relationship ' (1991: 54). As a result, because girls grow up in a relational rather than a separated context, empathy is an applicable goal of women's
Intimate partner violence (IPV) causes severe physical and psychological damage to victims. Older IPV survivors are increasing around the world with the rapidly growing older population. Little is known about the needs of older female IPV survivors in the Chinese cultural context; the aim of this study was to examine the needs of older female IPV survivors in Taiwan. A grounded theory approach was adopted. Individual in-depth interviews were utilized to collect data. First-level coding, constant comparison among coding, then grouping coding into higher levels of categories and identifying a central story were employed to analyze data. Findings were compared to literature for further verification. Eight Taiwanese older female IPV survivors aged 60 to 74 were interviewed. The findings revealed that the cultural premise emphasizing the importance of family was a major contributor to participants’ staying in abusive relationships. Four themes emerged in this study: 1) the marriage serving different purposes throughout the life course of the participants; 2) keeping the family whole enhances life satisfaction in older age; 3) working towards financial independence for lifetime security is an important goal; and 4) finding an independent space as a way of coping with the abusive relationship. Implications for social work practice, in particular incorporating the cultural premise into developing viable options for older female survivors, are discussed.
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