ABSTRACT
The personal This article describes my personal journey1 as an academic social worker and as a transnational as well as community-based feminist activist. As a woman I am a product of the feminist movement of the last 45 years. The starting point is the quiet struggle with my own confi ned world in a traditional middle-class Indian family. A signifi cant turning point was my decision to leave the country after I completed my Master’s degree in Philosophy. I arrived in Germany in 1969 with a small stipend provided by a priest to study a social work course in Dortmund. I was greatly infl uenced by this external environment and encountered the welfare approach of social work practice of the 1960s in Germany, where I worked with homeless communities, and the children of the ‘Gastarbeiter’.2 I returned to India and completed a Master’s course in the school of social work, at the University of Delhi, India in 1973. However, once again, to my utter disappointment, I was educated through textbooks that were primarily American or British. This social work education defeated my purpose to return to India, study in a socio-culturally contextual environment and seek some real transformations.
