Beverly McPhail is a feminist social worker, academic, writer, wife, and mother. She earned her BSN from the University of Florida in 1979, her MSW at the University of Houston in 1989, and her PhD in Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. She is the coauthor of Confronting Violence Against Women: A Challenge for Social Work (Longman, 1998) as well as author of numerous academic journal articles on violence against women, gender-bias hate crimes, feminist policy analysis, and teaching women's issues. She is currently working on a graphic memoir entitled, Number 2: How I Survived a Semi-Awful Childhood, Revived a Crushed Spirit, and Raised Socially Conscious Sons. Over the years she has written many opinion-editorial pieces for the Houston Chronicle and the former Houston Post on a range of women's issues. She was Director of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Houston for eight years, which serves students, staff, and faculty with information and referral, gender programming, and anti-violence initiatives. Beverly currently is an independent scholar doing contract work and serving as an expert witness in the area of sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking. She teaches women's issues as an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate College of Social Work as well as in the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston.
