Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

tory of feminism in Irish politics at certain moments in the past, the relationship
between social work and feminism was often ambiguous and distant. The
third argument seeks to go a little deeper to capture the contradictions using
Dean’s idea of ‘problematisation’ to suggest that in order to understand the
relationship between social work and gender, we need to take on board the
contradictions and complexities of the practice of social work to understand
their positioning within the broader context.
Such an approach is useful in encouraging students to think outside of
modernist constraints of ‘either-or’ and to engage in a more nuanced and critical
understanding of gender and social work which neither reduces social work to
a mere extension of patriarchal social systems nor elevates it to a champion of
women and women’s issues.
A second framework used to teach the history of gender and social work
in the United Kingdom has been to review a range of influential perspectives
and to encourage students to reflect on their strengths and limitations. This
normally begins with a consideration of the ‘first wave’ of feminism in the
UK associated with the Suffragette Movement and the struggle for the vote
for women, which was introduced in 1918. The ‘second wave’ relates to the
influence of feminist thinking and ideas during the 1960s and 1970s on the
welfare state and on social work within this. The Beveridge Report of 1942,
which set out the template for the British post-war welfare system, is critiqued
in terms of its construction of family policy within the context of traditional
patriarchal assumptions about the family.
For an introduction to ‘second wave’ feminist theory and social work,
students are introduced to a broad range of authors who address this subject.
Take Dominelli, 10 for example, who, in her first chapter Theorising Feminist
social Work practice reviews the range of perspectives which were influential
in social work since the 1960s. While expressing reservation about the categorisation
of ‘feminist ideas’ given that there is significant overlap in the approaches,
she recognises the value of identifying the core ideas and principles
in helping to develop a critical understanding of this broad and challenging
field. Her book also serves as a useful starting point for inquiry-based learning,
where students can discover the main authors and sources associated
9
Ibid., 27.
10
Lena Dominelli, Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002).
19