Students’ attitudes toward women: Do social work programs make a difference? Affilia 9

This article presents the results of a study of the attitudes of under-graduate students and changes in those attitudes toward women at various points in a social work program. The study found that students who took a greater number of courses had more liberal attitudes toward women than did students who took fewer courses and that the greatest changes in attitudes occurred during the begin-ning courses. The study also examined differences in attitudes by gender and major. Social work educators have a strong interest in the effects of professional socialization on students. As part of the socializa-tion process, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) (1982) requires social work programs to provide &dquo;content re-lated to oppression and to the experiences, needs, and re-sponses of people who have been subjected to institutional forms of oppression&dquo; (Standard 7.2). An underlying premise of the requirement is that exposure to this course content influ-ences students ’ values in a manner that is consistent with the aims of social work education and is congruent with the Cod