An Empowerment Model on Reconstituting the Meanings of Divorce

This article presents an empowerment model for working with Chinese divorced women through the reconstitution of meaning. Informed by feminist poststructuralism, the social worker facilitates the reconstitution of personal meanings of divorce held by Chinese divorced women by revealing the discursive roots of meanings and by interrogating with the women the meanings constituted by historical and social discourses on divorce in Hong Kong. The intervention process involves exploring positive meanings of divorce, challenging cultural oppression, exposing the discursive roots, and choosing alternative identities.