Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

In his article about early home visiting practice in Victorian England,
Stephen Webb wrote that such aspects of social work as midwifery were
dominated by women. This fact facilitated their access to people’s homes and
legitimized it. 7 In this way the relationship between visiting women and their
clients was created as an informal connection of power and trust. 8 Stephen
Webb showed the significance of the home visit and of this relationship in both
voluntary and professional social work, as well as the important role of women
in these activities. Home visit practice created new social and spatial relationships.
Researching the beginnings of social work in Hungary, the Hungarian
authors Borbala Juhasz, Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa pointed out in their
article “Tram to the outskirts” that the first generations of visiting women began
to traverse social and spatial borders. It was not easy for those women to
establish new forms of communication with “these strangers”, the women of
poorer classes. 9
The practice of home visits was established in Victorian England in
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Upper middle-class women created
the COS society in 1870. Growing up in the secure world of their Victorian
homes and coming to homes in London’s East End, their own living and moral
standards were confronted with mass poverty. Their domestic standards –
cosiness, order and hygiene – were challenged. In order to assist poor families
and gain access to the homes of the poor homes by establishing friendly
relationships with the people, prescriptions for home visits were elaborated.
The instructions regulated communication and the tone of speech, in order to
facilitate the activities of charity social support and education. 10
The aim of this article is to present home visit practice in Bulgaria from
its advent in 1914-1915 until 1939, showing its importance in social work
in Bulgaria and how social regulation was conducted by means of a network
of female activities. The aim is to present the main activities undertaken by
women of diverse social and educational backgrounds in the first two genera-
7
Stephen A. Webb, The comfort of strangers: social work, modernity and late Victorian England – Part I European
Journal of Social Work, Vol. 10, Number 1, March 2007: 39-55 Part II, June 2007: 193-209
8
Ibid.
9
Borbala Juhasz, Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa, “Tram to the Outskirts: Female Social Workers Crossing Borders
in Interwar Hungary”, in Weibliche und maennliche Entwuerfe des Sozialen. Wohlfahrtsgeschichte im Spiegel der
Genderforschung, ed. Elke Kruse and Evelyn Tegeler. (Opladen/Farmington Hills: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2007),
101-108.
10
Stephen Webb, the same article.
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