Dr. Deborah Padgett Receives Award for Feminist Scholarship and Practice

Professor Deborah Padgett’s article “Gender, Everyday Resistance and Bodily Integrity: Women’s Lives on Delhi Streets” has received the 2019 Affilia Award for Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work. Published in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work Volume 34, Issue 2, and co-authored with Prachi Priyam, the article is an ethnographic study focused on the lives and surrounding environment of 10 women sleeping unsheltered in Delhi, India.

“Like their housed counterparts,” Dr. Padgett and Ms. Pryiam wrote, “homeless women in India live with gender norms such as female modesty, marriage, motherhood, and economic dependence.” Through multiple interviews with each study participant, the authors explored how these women, faced with the myriad challenges of living on Delhi’s streets, “adhere to and adapt gender norms, how they engage in modes of resistance when faced with such expectations, and the role of religion and caste as each intersects with these norms.”

Affilia is the only peer-reviewed, scholarly social work journal from feminists’ points of view. Founded in 1986 and published quarterly, it has presented the Award for Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work each year since 2014. According to Affilia Editor in Chief Dr. Yoosun Park, Dr. Padgett and Ms. Priyam’s paper was a unanimous selection of the awards committee “based on the article’s significance, originality, attention to feminist approach, as well as an overall quality of research design, theoretical grounding, and quality of writing.”