Dominelli Lena. Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
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10 Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
such as disabled people of all ages. At the same time, the government has
severed the links between work with offenders and social work, removed
probation training from university settings and siphoned it off to work-
places that can contract a range of other university disciplines to provide
the necessary knowledge base (Sone, 1995; Ward and Lacey, 1994).
The final outcome of market-driven measures remains unclear, but a
number of concerns have been expressed about decoupling probation from
its social work origins. These include: the loss of social work’s interest in
changing behaviour (Ward and Lacey, 1994); disregard for the rehabilita-
tion of the offender (Williams, 1995); failure of probation to respond to peo-
ple’s needs as they define them; and deprofessionalisation of social work
(Dominelli, 1996). State measures linked to globalisation have also whittled
away professional power by devaluing its expertise. Taken in their totality,
these developments have placed the dilemma of the replacement of the
professional social worker by the ‘streetwise granny’ at the centre of public
debates. Also, feminisms’ preoccupation with women’s needs while
neglecting men’s has been questioned (Cahn, 1995). The unfolding of these
developments is of crucial importance to social work at this historical con-
juncture, providing themes I explore in this book to give it a topicality that
will exercise social workers for some time.
Social work has been implicated in these changes on a number of other
levels, some of which operate in contradiction to others. One of these
requires practitioners to ensure that people seeking welfare assistance
become self-sufficient citizens by being claimants for as short a period as
possible (Blair, 1999). This draws on the social work role that has women,
as the majority of basic grade workers, controlling other women in their
homemaking, child nurturing and elder caring capacities whilst holding
out the carrot of retraining for an elusive job (Millar, 1999). Another change
questions the need for professional social workers to intervene in people’s
lives under any circumstances, seeking instead to relegate their activities
to the unpaid voluntary and domestic realms in the anticipation that
women will fill the gaps left by withdrawn state services. This re-orienta-
tion of service provision has relied on the role of women as compensating
mechanisms responsible for making good the inadequacies of public wel-
fare resources. A third change has been the restructuring of service provi-
sions so that those not provided by either the state or the household can be
purchased in the marketplace. This has resulted in women becoming con-
sumers of services that have become increasingly evasive if they lack
financial resources for purchasing them (Neysmith, 1998).
For some women, these restructuring measures have been beneficial in
encouraging them to become successful private entrepreneurs occupying
a niche in which they provide welfare services that other women are will-
ing to purchase (Lloyd, 1996). Though poorly paid, these opportunities are
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particularly relevant to black women excluded from the labour market by
racism. A fourth aspect involves the transferal of welfare resources to pri-
vate entrepreneurs through enforced sales of public provisions (Dominelli
and Hoogvelt, 1996). The combined effect of these developments has been
that women have lost jobs in the public welfare state and become subjected
to re-employment in the private sector at lower rates of pay than previ-
ously and under more insecure conditions (Clarke and Newman, 1997).
Restructuring public sector jobs has removed some of women’s security
and reliance on the welfare state as the source of their financial emancipa-
tion and resulted in women workers subsidising privatisation initiatives
(Ralph et al., 1997).
Publicly-funded provisions have also targeted those most in need, leaving
a large swathe of people without recourse to alternatives because they lack
the wherewithal to purchase their own or reside in circumstances that
make it impossible for them to rely on impoverished others to help. For
example, the loss of access to welfare benefits provided by the British state
for young people between the ages of 16 and 18 has increased the numbers
of homeless young people roaming the streets without links to their fami-
lies (Bishopp et al., 1992). Here, as in other countries, this has exacerbated
their vulnerability as they have become victims of other people’s crimes or
involved in prostitution and drug-taking (Reitsma-Street, 1993). Similar
dynamics of state neglect have been set in motion for young lone mothers
who are encouraged to seek training and paid employment even when
children are small and dependent on them for daily care (Zucchino, 1997).
The restructuring of welfare has intensified the vulnerability of those
most in need of state services and increased the likelihood of their require-
ments being ignored. These actions will produce innumerable problems
that the state as the holder of the collective desire to help others will have
to solve in future. Meanwhile, those most at risk and those who interact
with them will pay the price for this neglect. The policies of retrenchment
can be redefined as short-termism that stores up foreseen human misery.
The predictability of these outcomes makes neo-liberal approaches to the
welfare of human beings outrageous in wealthy societies that consider
themselves civilised (Teeple, 1995).
The hardening of state attitudes regarding people in need has impacted
upon their formal rights of citizenship, intricately intertwined as they have
been, with access to welfare benefits. Formal citizenship has been re-
affirmed for women who have challenged their former exclusion on the
bases of segregated employment careers (Pascall, 1986) and an enforced
dependency on men (Dale and Foster, 1986; Showstack Sassoon, 1987), by
permitting women with male partners to seek assistance for their families,
but full citizenship remains elusive. So, children and women living with
men, whether married or not, have their resources aggregated in a family
Introduction 11
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12 Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
unit despite the unequal distribution of resources within the family (Pahl,
1980; Walby, 1990; Dominelli, 1999).
In other areas, women have lost out to men in the name of equality. For
example, in Britain, the equalisation of pensionable ages, has meant that
women previously entitled to retire at age 60 now have to wait until 63,
whilst men previously retiring at 65 can do so at 63. In effect, this equality
measure has been one in which the state compels women to subsidise men.
Meanwhile, the rise in the numbers of women and children living in
poverty continues unabated world-wide (UNDP, 1998).
At the same time, the importance of social workers responding to men’s
needs, particularly in relation to assisting men in the tasks of improving
their psycho-social functioning and re-education regarding the formation
of non-abusive intimate relationships with less socially powerful women
and children, has been identified and acted upon (Dominelli and McLeod,
1989; Cavanagh and Cree, 1996; Wild, 1999). Yet, even this can become a
contradictory move for it can pit men’s and women’s organisations against
each other in a scramble over resources (Stoltenberg, 1990).
These changes in the welfare state have been crucial in calling for a
rethinking of social work responses to people in need. Applicable to all
social workers, reconceptualising practice requires a particularly complex
response from feminist social workers. This is because feminists have to
take as their starting point the gendered nature of social relations that
divide men and women, while simultaneously not disregarding other
forms of oppression and differences that divide women from each other.
Achieving this goal requires that feminist social work theory and practice
transcends additive approaches to oppression and seeks ways of working
with children, women, and men that establish egalitarian relations
amongst them. This is a tall order, but a challenge to be faced if existing
unequal power relations are not to be reproduced in perpetuity. It is a
concern that guides the writing of this book.
Researching Feminist Social Work Practice
Gathering information for this book has entailed analysing documents of
various kinds and interviewing men and women. I have interviewed six
women and two men as ‘clients’ and six women and two men as practi-
tioners about each of the sections I cover in this book to ask about their
experiences of social work. I chose these practitioners because they had
particular expertise in working with the issues I wished to examine. The
‘clients’ invited to be interviewed had been recommended by practitioners
as being articulate about their own experiences. The interviewees have
been willing to have me retell their stories to others, but did not wish to be
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identified. Hence, I quote them anonymously and refer to their case mate-
rials where it seems appropriate by using fictitious names. The criterion I
employ to do this is that their words convey their views more powerfully
than mine. I do not claim this approach to have produced representative
findings. Nor have I presented these in empirical tables.
I adopt this stance for it is in keeping with feminist participative
research principles. It enables me to listen carefully to the respondents’
experiences as they tell them, try to understand what they are saying,
reflect more closely on their lives as they lead them, and theorise from that
(Reinhartz, 1992). That theorisation represents my interpretation of their
accounts (Stanley and Wise, 1993). Each narrative that I have collected
highlights some aspect of the relationship between the person and social
environment. The belief that the ‘personal is political’ provides an inter-
subjective framework for my consideration of their life stories, and under-
pins my relationship with the research participants.
Talking to women ‘clients’ about their encounters with social work pro-
fessionals and to practitioners about their work helps to develop feminist
insights about social work theory and practice. This adds to theoretical
developments in feminism more generally and constitutes part of the
research process. A sharing of interpretive understandings between the
researcher and subjects of the research helps to give meaning to the conclu-
sions reached. The emphasis of this research approach is as much about
how data on women is collected as it is about what is obtained, for whom,
and why. Feminist principles guide the entire research process – its design,
conduct, analysis, and use (Reinhartz, 1992).
Enabling women to tell their own stories and speak of their experiences
is integral to feminist ways of gathering knowledge and understanding
the world (Reinhartz, 1992). Engaging with women for the purposes of
building knowledges rooted in women’s practices is an interactive partic-
ipatory process in which: power imbalances are brought out into the open,
scrutinised and equalised as far as possible; the active construction of sto-
ries through the processes of listening and interpreting their significance is
acknowledged; and the commitment to using research to improve
women’s well-being is actively pursued (Reinhartz, 1992; Belenky et al.,
1997). My research aims to contribute to the further development of femi-
nist social work and extend the formulation of its theories, practice and
teaching materials for practitioners in the field and academy.
The approach I used resembles grounded theory (Glasser and Strauss,
1967) in allowing women and men research participants to speak for them-
selves, but lacks the systematic pursual of themes that grounded theory
requires to prove their generalisability. Expenditure of research resources
in the exhaustive way propounded in grounded theory is not necessary in
a study that examines, deliberates upon and extends data already in the
Introduction 13
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14 Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
public domain. I also have misgivings about grounded theory’s capacity to
decontextualise and depoliticise people’s stories because it requires a nega-
tion of the values of the researcher, something which is methodologically
impossible for feminist researchers to achieve. Another reason for my
choice is that all research, however rigorous, can only be partial (Harding,
1990). Empirical data is no more than the systematic collection of anec-
dotes as selected and interpreted by the collector. Thus, although distanced
from their stories, I do not claim impartiality in my approach to them, I
simply seek to make my own value system evident so that readers can
interpret what I say and judge for themselves the extent to which they
share my perspective.
The Structure of the Book
In this book, I argue that feminism as a body of thought consisting of a
number of diverse strands, has had a considerable impact on social work
theory and practice in the past decade. It has done so by changing the gender-
blind aspects of both theories and practice and offering alternative ways of
delivering services. And, it has more to offer. Despite this, feminist social
work has remained a form of practice that is undertaken largely by indi-
viduals (although they may come together to form support groups and
network with one another) working in social services departments, private
enterprises and voluntary organisations, rather than providing a method
formally adopted by a wide range of mainstream agencies and collective
ventures.
I consider this development in light of the new challenges posed by post-
modernism and the insistence of diverse groups of women that the range of
oppressions that impinge upon them be taken on board and their different
voices be recognised as legitimate expressions of their realities. I examine
how feminist social workers can respond to these critiques and formulate
forms of theory and practice more appropriate to the needs of individuals
and groups seeking welfare assistance at the beginning of the 21st century.
Despite the gains in women’s position over the past 20 years, I argue that
the need for women to continue mobilising around gender-based actions to
foster their well-being persists. Because many feminists are concerned
about changing the nature of masculinity, feminism is also pertinent to
men. And its vision of more egalitarian social relations between men and
women, remains relevant. Feminist social work theory and practice is
important in promoting the welfare of men, women and children.
This book is structured to revisit feminist social work theory and practice
in the hopes of providing new insights that will enable practitioners to
work with difference in ways that go beyond the idea that they are experts
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who exercise power over those they seek to help. People’s aspirations for
recognition of who they are and the handling of identity politics by differ-
ent schools of feminist thought will be considered as I explore how to tran-
scend dualism in Chapter one. Chapter two focuses on the significance of
social work as a gendered profession within the mixed economy of care at a
point in time when public caring activities are being relegated to the private
realm of the home and re-asserted as women’s responsibilities. In Chapter
three, I consider challenges to elitist notions of professionalism emanating
from the new social movements and seek to re-orient social work activities
in more egalitarian directions. The importance of working with men from a
feminist perspective becomes the subject matter of Chapter four, and I con-
sider the appropriateness of feminist action in this area.
In Chapter five, I examine a key area of practice – social work with chil-
dren and families – and ask the extent to which the tensions which exist
between women’s rights to self-fulfilment and their responsibility to care
for others can be reconciled. As the population continues to age, caring for
older people is also becoming a major area in which women are expected
to exert their energies. Caring for children and caring for older people will
therefore tax women’s nurturing skills, and under neo-liberalism, will
have to be enacted with minimal state support. Chapter six considers the
state’s commitment to community care in terms of the demands it is mak-
ing on women within the context of the community as the site for the expli-
cation of a particular kind of gender politics whether the women are
unpaid carers in the home or paid employees in the community care sys-
tem. This chapter focuses on older people because they constitute the
largest group covered by community care policies. Other ‘client’ groups,
e.g., disabled people, who are also covered by these, I consider in case
study materials throughout the book, where the specific points applying to
them can be made. Chapter seven argues the case that working with
offenders is a social work task that requires particular skills and initiatives
if feminist approaches to probation practice are to be realised. Chapter
eight reiterates the view that feminist social work is central to future prac-
tice and highlights how it can contribute to creating a better world with
women at the centre of social life instead of at its margins (hooks, 1984).
Notes
1 Language is embedded in power relations which are often implicit in its usage.
I use ‘client’ in quotes to indicate the problematic nature of this term and ques-
tion the assumption that those who engage in ‘client’ relationships with social
workers are dependent beings with no capacity to shape the world to their
own liking. I consider both ‘clients’ and workers as agents capable of influenc-
ing the social relationships in which they participate.
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16 Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
2 Language difficulties arise when referring to different groups of women.
Identifying only their uniquenesses can obscure shared commonalities. The
problematics of terms such as ‘black women’ or ‘white women’ are obvious.
However, there is merit in using them to point out that although experienced
differently, racism impacts on the relationships enacted between them. This
does not mean that either category is homogeneous or made up of women who
are the same as each other. Heterogeneity of the population is important when
discussing matters of identity. When I refer to particular attributes of identity,
I will use other terms.
3 The narrator’s voice is also problematic. I am both part of the broader feminist
movement and an individual woman within it. I use the distancing device of
the third person plural to indicate that although I share elements of my experi-
ence and viewpoint with other women, I cannot assume who they are and,
therefore, desist from using ‘we’. I have chosen this option to signal my partic-
ular position without appropriating these other voices through inclusivity.
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17
1
Theorising Feminist Social
Work Practice
Introduction
Social work has been criticised for being an oppressive part of the modernist
project of the nation state (Pierson, 1991). Leftwingers have criticized it for
imposing bureaucratic forms of social control upon poor people living in
working-class communities (Corrigan and Leonard, 1978). Those in the
‘new’ social movements have noted its capacity to reproduce oppressive
social relations under the guise of providing care (Dominelli and McLeod,
1982; Dominelli, 1988; Hanmer and Statham, 1988; Oliver, 1990; Morris,
1991). Rightwing ideologues have complained about social workers’ capac-
ity to throw money at social problems without producing the desired
results. These they have identified as preventing families from breaking up,
ensuring that parents take proper care of their children, keeping older peo-
ple safe within the bosom of their families and controlling delinquent
behaviour amongst juveniles (Murray, 1990, 1994).
Women have been at the centre of the struggle to define the appropriate
role for social work in rapidly changing societies. Although crucial policies
and legislation are formulated by men, women undertake the bulk of the
caring tasks carried out within the home, and dominate the basic grades of
paid professionals doing such work. Thus, arguments about the purpose
of social work are intricately wound up with disputes over women’s posi-
tion in the social order.
Feminist social work has shed important insights on this issue because
it takes women’s well-being as the starting point, though not necessarily
the end of its analyses and has made creating egalitarian social relations an
integral part of practice. Feminist debates have provided conceptual
frameworks with a fluidity and capacity to respond to criticisms and theo-
rise the changing nature of women’s lives. Key in feminists’ rethinking of
social work has been the questioning of positivist epistemological and
ontological paradigms (Harding, 1990). These have included:
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18 Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
1. challenging men’s experiences as the yardstick for measuring
women’s;
2. unpacking universalist standards and exposing their failure to
describe, understand or value women’s diverse lifestyles and contri-
butions to society;
3. critiquing dualist thinking and the concepts that formulate knowledge
as binary categories operating in opposition to each other;
4. recognising identity politics as a central dynamic in how social rela-
tions are organised and reproduced;
5. respecting women’s multiple and fluid identities;
6. acknowledging the significance of gendered power relations in shap-
ing the opportunities available for men and women to build their lives
in accordance with their views of their needs; and
7. recognising the capacity of women to take action on their own behalf
and to demonstrate solidarity across a range of social divisions.
These points become themes I explore throughout this book for these have
given rise to what I consider crucial features that differentiate feminist
social work from other forms of social work. Although I examine these in
greater detail in subsequent chapters, I would summarise them here as the
following:
1. assessing and working with the impact of patriarchal gender rela-
tions on men, women and children;
2. examining the impact of public and private patriarchy on women,
men and children;
3. reconceptualising dependency;
4. avoiding false equality traps when building egalitarian relationships;
5. celebrating differences;
6. celebrating women’s strengths and abilities;
7. valuing caring work and reforming the conditions under which it is
carried out;
8. deconstructing community;
9. unpacking motherhood;
10. challenging monolithic descriptions of ‘the family’ and expanding
the definition;
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Theorising Feminist Social Work Practice 19
11. considering the social construction of gender;
12. separating the needs of women, children and men;
13. working as an insider/outsider;
14. mediating the power of the state; and
15. understanding agency and the capacity of the powerless to resist
oppression.
In this chapter I focus on feminist contributions to knowledge and skill
building in social work, drawing on different perspectives and controver-
sies that rage over the range of social divisions that divide women from
each other. I also consider ways of furthering feminist social work by draw-
ing on feminist insights from the social sciences, particularly sociology,
because these contribute to understanding social work.
Creating New Understandings of Women’s Lives
Feminist social work theory and practice is a fairly new theoretical
construct, appearing formally on the academic social work scene in a signifi-
cant way during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It originally sought
to highlight the differing nature of women’s experience in social work – the
invisibility of it on the theoretical front where the ‘universal’ male
personae held sway (Wilson, 1977); and identify the inadequacy of a prac-
tice that operated within the confines of a view of women as predominantly
carers of others – their husbands, children and dependent older relatives
(Dominelli and McLeod, 1989). Traditional social work practice has reflected
the dominant social order which assumes women’s dependency within the
family (Segal, 1983) and fails to recognise women’s struggles to be them-
selves through their daily work regardless of setting. Defining women as
dependent has devalued their ability to act as agents who shape their lives
in different directions by interacting with others (Dominelli, 1986a).
Feminist practitioners and scholars have drawn on feminist theories and
practice to place gender on the social work map by drawing upon and val-
idating women’s experiences as women. Early feminist analyses identified
the gendered nature of social work profession where frontline work was
undertaken predominantly by women working with other women (Wilson,
1977). The theorisation of social work as ‘women’s work’ with a segregated
division of labour characterised by women working with ‘clients’ and men
in management making decisions about policies that impact on practice
and allocate resources, came later (Hallet, 1991). Moves towards profes-
sionalisation and the centrally controlled reorganisation of social work
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