Creating Feminist Working Relations In and Through Social Work

Abstract

As indicated in the Chapter 4, social work as a profession is one site of women’s inequality in the labour market. Moreover, women’s position in the labour market generally, while marked by several gains across the past decade in terms of legally endorsed rights — such as in equal opportunities legislation and in terms of the development of various practices such as positive action against sexual harassment — has undergone a deterioration during the recent recession and through the onset of ‘radical right’ policies. There has been a relatively high rate of increase in unemployment (Coyle, 1984), a decline in the percentage of male income earned (Aldred, 1981; Armstrong, 1984) and the erosion of certain employment rights relating specifically to women such as the right to re-employment after maternity leave (Dale and Foster, 1986). In such a situation one cannot look to any generalised improvement in working conditions for women which will also benefit women social workers, and social work agencies’ characteristic organisational forms still tend to be marked by dominance and subordination in a way which is detrimental to the interests of women social workers.