Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

and mother. Even the ever well-informed inspector of the Poor Law admitted
that he felt uncertain about instructing on issues that belonged in the women’s
sphere, including child care and the care of adults with disabilities. He wrote:
“I was convinced that this was for women.” As child care blossomed, so the
new nation received its first female poor relief counsellor (1918). Her task was
to offer assistance on women’s issues to the other counsellors, who were men.
One reason for this consensus was that female labour was available
for free. Voluntary visiting in poor people’s homes represented an excellent
opportunity to bring women’s voluntary work under state (that is, male)
control and also to increase the volume of their work. In addition, the new
system formed an easily controllable bridge from private charity to poor relief.
For many reasons, this was important to the efforts of the state.
Why Was Administration Not For Women?
So far we have discussed the formation of gender division from the point
of view of women’s work and reproductive functions in the context of the
municipal economy. The simultaneous development of the membership of the
local Poor Relief committees, to which women had recently gained admission,
was not feminisation. There were complaints that women members of
the committees failed to attend committee meetings or that they were not even
willing to accept these posts. Also, when they were present they only caused
additional expenses for poor relief because they made suggestions for offering
assistance without full consideration of the consequences. Men construed that
the women in the committees were too eager to speak up for the poor, which
made reasonable decision making impossible. For instance, men claimed that
women did not meet the requirements of organized decision making.
To make the social control of the lower classes more effective, one of the
three male counsellors stressed the importance of women becoming members
of the committees. He suggested that women should be instructed on the
principles of the Poor Law and other poor relief regulations. Further, he argued
that their duties in the committee should be properly defined: “lf we want to
make poor relief an enlightening institution for ordinary people we cannot
neglect the efforts of women (. . .) Proper poor relief requires the judicial mind
of men and the heart of women.”
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