Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

Questions for students:
1. What was the position of a female social adviser in the
municipality social service?
2. What were her duties, powers and competences?
3. What expectations were placed on her, according to the
municipality regulations?
Conclusion
In the period 1915 – 1939 women created a large space for various activities
of social support, which became legitimate places for speaking about social
problems. In the 1930s the activities of female volunteers and professionals
existed in tandem. Samaritan women, visiting nurses, teacher/advisors,
municipality social advisors, students of the social high school made the home
visit a common practice where power and trust were negotiated. Women of
diverse social and educational backgrounds took part in these activities,
crossing class and spatial borders.
As female work, it was based on the social maternity ideology, demanding
from professional and voluntary social workers a devotion to their work,
empathy and specific communication skills. For the home visit to be accepted
by people in their homes, the voluntary and professional social workers needed
the authority and backing of their institutions. To ensure that their advice be
heard, they needed also to be different in their outlook, manner of speaking
and behaviour from women in both upper and lower classes.
Home visit practice changed the topography of social regulation in
urban and rural spaces in Bulgaria. In the 1930s, female social worker and
volunteers were accepted as key figures of modern social work and biopolitics,
changing the public image of women in Bulgaria.
The power “over life” – biopolitics, appeared after the eighteenth century
in western Europe as a new power to sustain or retard the optimisation of
the life of the population. It made possible a modern “administration of life”,
which concerned such social problems as health, sanitation, the birth rate,
longevity and race. 26 It needed new social techniques and rationales, ones that
differed from the disciplinary tools. The “administration of life” needed regula-
26
Mitchell Dean, Governmentality, Power and Rule in Modern Society (London, Open University Press, 1999), 99.
141