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The literature and research investigating why people choose social work as a career have tended to focus on motivational traits rather than on the meaning-making processes individuals engage in to make sense of their career choices within their personal and social contexts. The research project presented in this book describes the stories and meaning-making processes two students participating in the social work program at Central Queensland University and I use to understand our career choice experiences.Having identified the importance of caring as a pivotal theme in the professional discourse and what drew us to social work, we explore other experiences that tend to support women s entrance into the profession but challenge men s participation. Drawing on the metaphor of a quilt to describe our career choice experience, this project draws attention to how aspiring social workers tend to carefully choose, cut and join together bits of gendered narrative material to create a professional story that both legitimises their entrance into the profession and to position them within the larger career domain.

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Jo Mensinga lectures in Social Work at James Cook University. Jo s practice, teaching and research interests include counselling, supervision, learning and professional development approaches, narrative inquiry and yoga. Jo is currently researching how yoga contributes to professional practice and the personal well-being of human service workers.

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