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Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of analysis; the social work profession, started and maintained largely by women, has been home to several generations of feminists. Yet, social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions of feminist research. This article explores contemporary feminist social work research by examining 50 randomly selected research-based articles that claimed feminism within their work. The analysis focused on the authors' treatment of the gender binary, their grounding in theory, their treatment of methodology, and their feminist claims. Feminist social work researchers are invited to reconceptualize feminisms to include third-wave feminist thought and more explicitly engage theory and reflexivity in their work.Despite the existence of feminist social work practice, courses on feminist research methods in schools of social work, and specific journals and researchers dedicated to ''women in social work,'' social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions and explorations of feminist research. To gain a better understanding of this absence, we critically explore the current state of feminist social work research in this article. We draw on previous feminist scholarship, both in and outside social work, that has been specifically concerned with feminist research to analyze current trends in feminist social work research.For this project, we randomly selected 50 research-based articles from journals with relevance for social work and of interest to social workers (details of our methods are presented later) and engaged in a critical and reflexive in-depth analysis of these articles. Guiding our analyses were the following four questions: What makes the article feminist? How does the article treat binary (essentialized) thinking, particularly in relation to gender? To what degree is the article clearly grounded in theory?

The present study used secondary data gathered from a statewide random sample of 1,073 adult women enrolled in Utah's single-parent cash assistance program and logistic regression to examine associations between self-reported physical, emotional, and sexual abuse during childhood and later life physical and mental health indicators. Results demonstrated significant associations between low-income women's self-reports of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in childhood, and current and lifetime anxiety disorder, domestic violence, current posttraumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, physical health or mental health issues, and any mental health diagnosis. These results build on previous research to paint a fuller picture of the associations between childhood abuse and physical and mental health for low-income women in Utah. Consistent with research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, findings suggest the applicability of conceptualizing childhood abuse as a public health issue. Social workers can play an integral role in promoting and implementing broader screening practices, connecting affected individuals with long-term interventions, and applying research findings to the design and provision of services within a public health model.

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