Curricular Content on Women: Gender Equity in Social Work Education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although the majority of social work practitioners, students, and clients in the 1970s were women, social work education curricula at the time did not accurately reflect women’s capabilities or concerns. In 1972, the Council on Social Work Education appointed the Task Force on Women in Social Work Education to examine the content of program curricula with respect to women’s issues. After seeking input through a national survey of social work education programs, the Task Force developed new curricular resources and advocated policy changes in an effort to ensure that all programs would offer accurate and appropriate information on women. This article reports on the historical textual analysis I conducted using documents from the National Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota detailing the early work of this Task Force. I identified four themes related to curricular content: women as individuals with power, women as objects, women as problem, and no content on women/unsure of need for content. These findings have implications for social workers and social work educators as they seek to understand the history of the profession, ensure accurate coverage of gendered content in today’s curricula, and meet the challenges of practice in today’s world.