Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

her knowledge in Bulgaria. Returning in 1932, she gave lectures about social
work methods in Germany. She translated texts by Alice Salomon and other
German authors and published some articles about professional social work.
At the newly opened Social High School for women in Sofia, she became a
lecturer on social work methods. She underlined the importance of personal
contact with the needy and the need to collect data, create relationships of trust
and support during home visits. 18
Rayna Petkova wrote that the social worker must have some professional
skills. The social worker had to be capable of observing the social situation; she
must have the courage to take decisions, hygienic, juridical and ethical knowledge,
and knowledge of the legislation and institutional base for social work.
She had to posses also the skills to speak well, to be kind, to have a warm and
responsive heart, to know the psychological characteristics of people in authority
and others. 19
According to the curricula at the Social High Social for Women, the
students regularly visited poor homes on the outskirts of Sofia in order to
observe them and to study how to report on the social situation of families.
Women graduates of the school were prepared for social work practice; they
knew that it was important to the people and that they could improve their live
and change society. One of them wrote:
“(…) Armed with the necessary knowledge acquired after two years of hard work, the
alumni of the Social High School for Women proceed to the implementation of their
skills under extremely severe external conditions but with a burning internal flame for
real social work.
The theory time is all over now. The thought in the mind is clear – to heal the
pains of society, to educate and re-educate friends and relatives – certainly a hard but
noble task. There is no place for delicacy, for sentimental sighs, no, the harsh law of
life is all around. When taking her duties in hand a social worker faces the daily round
of those nearby who are living in grief and misery and who are only sometimes lit up
with small delights. They want, seek, struggle, fall in desperation, yield... It is the social
worker’s duty to help those people, to make their lives less painful and not as dark. She
18
Rayna Petkova, “Metodi na obshestvenoto podpomagane v Germanija – predi idvaneto na Hitler” (Methods of
social assistance in Germany – before Hitler took power), in Medikopedagogichesko spisanie, V.2, 1935, 4-5.
19
Rayna Petkova, Socialnata rabota v Germania (Social work in Germany), (Sofia, 1933).
138