Profile

Career Focus:

Social work in an international context, feminist counseling for girls*, violence against girls* and FLINTA, child and youth work, psychosocial trial support

Biography

Stefanie Dorotka is an Austrian social worker with an international focus on child and youth welfare, an Erasmus Mundus graduate and an employee of the Vienna Mädchenberatung -Girls' Counseling Service for sexually abused girls* and women*. Dorotka is also a scientific lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Burgenland.

Dorotka's life path seemed predetermined early on, as she grew up in rural and patriarchal structures and was supposed to marry and take over the family farm as the firstborn. However, Dorotka resisted and began to seek her path. She was the first in the family to complete her A-levels, "so the fact that I was allowed to do them at all was crazy", and she became politically active at an early age. At 14, she started working in a youth cultural association, organized demonstrations, wrote articles for the association's magazine, and helped develop a podcast. She particularly enjoyed being a voice for young people and making herself and others heard.

At 18, Dorotka realized she wanted to leave her parents' home. So, she moved to Italy to work on a volunteer project with older people in Luserna San Giovanni. When she returned six months later, she had proven that it was possible to take a different path. This upheaval changed many things for Dorotka personally. Nevertheless, after her return, her family expected her to study something "proper", such as medicine, law or physiotherapy. Dorotka agreed to apply for physiotherapy training, but her experiences in Italy had irrevocably awakened her interest in social work. After she was eventually accepted to study physiotherapy and social work at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Linz, she accepted the social work course despite her family's doubts. Dorotka's main focus was on the joy of working with others and the versatility of the psychosocial field.

Dorotka worked alongside her studies and commuted from her parent's home, as moving to Vienna or Innsbruck would have exceeded her financial capacities at the time. Due to her family's farm ownership, Dorotka was not eligible for scholarships or study grants. During her studies, Dorotka particularly enjoyed trying out many different areas of social work and worked at the Intervention Center against Violence in Vienna as part of her internships.

However, her desire to study abroad persisted during her studies, so Dorotka went to Finland on an Erasmus program during her bachelor's degree to study at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Vantaa. After her return, the political situation in Austria, which she perceived as "racist and narrow-minded", made it difficult for her to settle in 2013. Therefore, Dorotka left Austria behind for an extended period and went to London on the Erasmus Plus program. There, Dorotka first completed an internship at the Leaving Care Unit of the Children and Young People's Services. After six months, the opportunity arose to take on a position as a social worker to support young people and their foster families in the transition to a self-determined life. In this context, Dorotka was also involved in the national research project "Head Hearts Hands" organized by the Fostering Network London, which investigated the interplay between social pedagogy and foster parenting. Dorotka enjoyed the national research exchange and conference visits, and when these ceased at the end of the project, it was time for Dorotka to move on. Even though the experiences in London were very formative for Dorotka, she emphasized that it was not an easy time, but one in which she had to prove herself again and again as a young woman, master the start of her career and build a new life.

At the end of her time in London, Dorotka applied for an Erasmus Mundus Master's scholarship and was one of sixteen accepted into the program. During the program, she studied first in Portugal, then in Norway and finally in Sweden. She completed her studies with a Master's thesis on "Emotions in Social Work Practice" in 2018.

After returning to Austria, Dorotka returned to child and youth welfare. Dorotka applied to the Girls' Counselling Service for Sexually Abused Girls* and Women* to build on her interest in working with women* and girls* and to work with a decidedly feminist specialization. For Dorotka, it is a pleasure to work in the intergenerational feminist team, to build on her bachelor thesis on violence against women, and to combine her aspirations for political change with her everyday work. As a counselor for victims of sexualized violence, she works in particular on resource-oriented stabilization and offers clients education for an informed decision on reporting and psychosocial process support. Therefore, the maxim of partisanship is essential for her work, as well as a high level of frustration tolerance and a holistic view of healing, because "law does not equal justice". According to Dorotka, the system is "not friendly to those affected", but she wants everyone who seeks counseling to know that they are not to blame. Dorotka is proud when she has the feeling that she has been able to stand up for people who were unable to do so themselves in the meantime and to convey the following message in her counseling sessions: "You did not do anything wrong. It is okay the way you are, and no one should be abusive towards you."

Dorotka has been teaching international social work at the Burgenland University of Applied Sciences since 2019. As a lecturer, she sees the opportunity to reflect on automated procedures in her work at the counseling center and discuss creative solutions by "learning together" with the students. Dorotka experiences teaching as both a professional and personal enrichment, although, for her, it is also symbolic of the discipline of social work: "We try to find a way together. Moreover, that is what social work is for me because you have to talk to each other and cannot narrow-mindedly push through your line; that is just impossible." However, Dorotka is critical that social work is often only locally oriented, and that foreign work experience needs to be more recognized in Austria. That said, she has learned a lot from her international experience, which has made her aware of the importance of drawing on the knowledge and literature of other countries.

For Dorotka, the reflection of practice, theory and experiential knowledge also occurs in feminist teams and supervision. Becoming aware of "what do I do and what can I do [as a woman] and what am I told I cannot do and can do anyway" is an integral part of her feminist identity. Dorotka was often told that she was still too young to be able to make her own decisions, but "that people believed I cannot do it sometimes also spurred me on to really keep at it."

For the future development of feminist perspectives, Stefanie Dorotka emphasizes the need to recognize change and advocates a feminism that leaves room for exchange and discussion. Dorotka says about herself: "My feminism has also changed." She expressed concern about the increasing radicalization and the loss of bridges between individual groups. Dorotka sees her work at the girls' counseling center as activism on a small scale because she and her colleagues try to change systems in the long term, balance fighting spirit and realism and take a critical stance towards state actors with differing ideas – without losing sight of what they have in common: "We need cooperation. We cannot say 'they do everything badly'. We need them to a certain extent. And they need us."

By Emelie Rack (2024)

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Selected Works