Ask Nicole: The Role of Social Workers in Reproductive Justice
March is Social Work Month, and the 2024 theme is “Empowering Social Workers!: Inspiring Action, Leading Change.”
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that my passion area is Reproductive Justice, and how the framework looks through a social work lens.
Reproductive Justice and social work are very complimentary. As RJ is a community organizing model that centers community leadership and challenges structural inequities, the framework provides a holistic understanding of our circumstances, and how they help or hinder our sexual and reproductive decision making. Social work supports individual and collective capacity for social functioning, working to create societal conditions that support communities in need. Together, they acknowledge that we seldom make life decisions in a vacuum. Social, economic, racial, gender, and cultural dynamics impact what we have access to and how we make decisions to support our sexual and reproductive care.
Reproductive Justice stands at the intersection of social work practice and human rights. As social workers navigate our roles in advancing RJ, we’ll encounter multifaceted challenges and opportunities across micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Consider these questions as you navigate your social work education and career to advance Reproductive Justice:
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