Cultural and Gender Accountability in the 'Just Therapy' Approach

Abstract

This paper addresses the issues of cultural and gender accountability within therapeutic organisations. It is written from the perspective of a Samoan woman and a Pakeha (white) man in an agency that is structured into three cultural sections. The paper discusses the issues and agency experience around two critical questions. How do workers, women and men and people of different cultures in an agency or institution, protect against gender and culture bias in their work on a day to day basis? Furthermore, how do they do this in societies where sexist and racist assumptions are integral part of the upbringing and way of life, as they are in most modern industrial states? The authors draw deeply from their agency experience as they outline the possibility of responsible partnerships between the genders and cultures. In doing so they address issues of pain, vulnerability, cultural caucusing, institutional space and the convergence of meaning that was previously conflictual.