Presented the 6-month follow-up findings of an experimental intervention designed to provide postshelter advocacy services to women with abusive partners. The intervention involved randomly assigning half the research participants to receive the free services of an advocate, 4 to 6 hours per week, for the first 10 weeks postshelter. One hundred forty-one battered women were interviewed about their experiences immediately upon their exit from a domestic violence shelter: 95% of the sample were interviewed 10 weeks thereafter (postintervention), and 93% were successfully tracked and interviewed 6 months later. At the 6-month follow-up, participants in both groups reported increased social support, increased quality of life, less depression, less emotional attachment to their assailants, and an increased sense of personal power. Although women in both groups reported some decrease in physical abuse over time, there were no statistically significant differences between those with and those without advocates, and abuse continued to be a problem for many women. Those who were still involved with their assailants continued to experience higher levels of abuse and had been more economically dependent upon the men prior to entering the shelter. Women who had worked with advocates continued to report being more satisfied with their overall quality of life than did the women in the control group.

When Meg Bond delivered her Presidential Address to Division 27 members in 1998, she called for a continued study of organizational contexts where, proportionally, people spend most of their time. Her argument is parallel to others~Bennett, Anderson, Cooper, Hassol, Klein, & Rosenblum, 1966;Rappaport, 1977;Shinn, 1987;Trickett, 1996! who have long thought that community psychologists should study issues in diverse and multiple contexts. Today, some of the major contextual settings of our lives include the organizations where we work, play, and volunteer. In fact, most of us exist within multiple, overlapping, organizational systems. For example, middle and upper class individuals work in a primary organization~e.g., a work site, school, or in the government!, and in addition, function in boy0girl scout troops, school council boards, domestic violence shelters, and other volunteer organizations. The home or neighborhood is no longer the community where we spend most of our time. Most of our daily interpersonal contacts, and more generally our human existence, occurs within and in-relation-to organizations.It is hard to imagine a person who is completely disconnected from any organizational system. Some marginalized and oppressed groups-like the poor and the homeless-tend to be dependent on the policies and procedures of government organizations~federal, state, and local agencies!, nonprofits, and the social responsibility projects of profit making firms. Much of their interaction with these organizations is in relation to human service provision~e.g., health, welfare, education!. Some directly live and function within public organizational systems~e.g., missions, group homes, prisons, and other institutional care!, while others interact with profit-making organizational systems as customers to their services. Thus, in line with this logic, we suggest that we all may be living in organizational communities, where organizations are functioning as our professional neighborhoods. As such, we must consider the extent to which there has been any meaningful discourse regarding organizational contexts or organization theory within the field of community psychology?In June of 1987, a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychologỹ AJCP! was dedicated to organizational concerns. To open up a discourse in this area, Keys and Frank~1987! asked two main questions in their lead article:~1! What does community psychology contribute to the study of organizations?, and,~2! What does the study of organizations contribute to community psychology? In attempting to answer the first question, the authors suggested that community psychologists offer a unique perspective with a focus on the well-being of the worker within the varying contexts of organizations. Community psychologists are interested in the quality of life and psychological needs of the workers that operate within organizations. Considering that much of the literature on organizations promotes performance and profitability ideals for the organization, the com...

This article examines women who have been antinuclear activists at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant for two decades. Qualitative interviews focus on their perceived transformations over time that are based on gender and everyday experiences. They perceive gender as both a barrier and a facilitator to activism, even after 20 years. Women describe their technological education as one strategy to overcome the barrier of gender. On the other hand, they consider the gendered role of motherhood as a primary catalyst for action. In addition, they discuss individual everyday experiences focused on the health concerns for family members that influenced their political activity. Over time, women linked personal transformations with increased political understanding and involvement.