Bringing the hope in Pandora's box to light: The resilience and resilience strategies of women exposed to childhood incest from feminist social work perspective

This exploratory retrospective study attempts to establish an understanding beyond pathology and adaptation by examining incest and resilience at the crossroads of empowerment and feminist social work. Resilience is conceptualized in a multifaceted way by integrating the literature knowledge and incest is addressed through blood, space, care, trust bond and independent of consent. The narratives gathered from in-depth interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis method and interview platforms were decided by 15 women who consented to participate, being reached via purposeful snowball sampling method. The four key components of incest, -the system, the perpetrator, the witnesses and the exposed-, can be visible within narratives in terms of unequal power relations, oppressive and dominant gender regime and the familial ideology. In consequence, a four-dimensional pattern of incest and resilience has been developed and systematized namely "Subjective Empowerment Dimension", "Critical Consciousness Dimension", "Resistance and Transcendence Dimension" and "Collective, Solidarity and Transformative Action Dimension". Threats to security were presented in the context of Lena Dominelli's "Multidimensional Power Model", while the resilience strategies used were addressed in the categorization of subjective, potential and collective power strategies. The results demonstrate that the resilience regarding incest is a "feminist resilience" beyond survival. Active agents, with critical consciousness of private is political, use the transformation in their self-constructed identities as a power of resistance in transforming the system. This research embodies how women's faith in themselves, despite the system questions their credibility, is transformed into hope through solidarity action in a regime where patriarchy produces Pandora's Box, gives it to women, and declares them to be criminals. The results, combined with the suggestions of the participants, are structured as proactive and reactive suggestions in such a way that social work policy and practice will demonstrate an anti-oppressive, empowerment based and rights-oriented transformation through a feminist perspective.