The Current State of Feminism and Social Work

Feminism challenges gender oppression and strives for equality and human rights for all women, drawing on a rich and diverse body of knowledge and activist practices. Social work is concerned with social inclusion, social justice, human rights, and improved quality of life for disadvantaged groups. It is clear why feminism and social work have been natural allies for more than a century, working side by side to improve the lives of women who are, and have always been, overrepresented among the poor and marginalised. Yet, the relevance of feminism to modern life is often questioned, including by social work students but also more widely in other forums such as the media. Debates about the relevance of feminism can be exasperating to feminist social workers who know that violence against women and their children by male intimate partners remains alarmingly high, that same-sex marriage is still denied, and that the gender pay gap persists. These are only a few examples of gendered sociocultural and structural oppressions.

To move beyond exasperation, we remind ourselves that this questioning of feminism happens in a context of sexual politics. The feminist concept of sexual politics proposes that male dominance is constantly being reclaimed and reasserted over time as it is challenged by the shifting and changing meanings and effects of gender, power, masculinities, femininities, bodies, and material, social, and political contexts (Franzway, 2016, p. 19). So, from this perspective contestation of, and hostility towards, feminism is understood as actively concerned with rendering gender inequalities and discrimination invisible. When sexual politics is recognised, it becomes clear why feminism remains critical in contemporary societies but also, more specifically, to social work.

It was in this highly contested space of sexual politics that we became motivated to showcase feminism in contemporary social work in our recent edited book, Contemporary Feminisms in Social Work Practice, published by Routledge in 2016 (Wendt & Moulding, 2016). We invited feminist researchers and practitioners from across Australia and beyond to contribute. The book engages with core knowledge and curriculum areas taught in social work education programs and explores the everyday practice worlds of social work to show how feminism has influenced the development, thinking, and work of the profession.

Through the production of this book, we gained important insights into the current state of the relationship between feminism and social work. First, our contributors’ work demonstrated that feminism is a broad theoretical lens used widely within social work to explore and understand women’s experiences of gender oppression. A feminist perspective brings a critical lens to explorations of gender power relations and inequalities, offering a broad theoretical orientation that enables social workers to advocate for social justice, empowerment, and social change.

Second, engagement with feminist perspectives within social work has become more nuanced over time and includes attention not only to oppressive structural gender power inequalities but also to the social construction of gender, the intersection of gender with other social inequalities, and the prospects for women’s agency. Feminism in social work engages with symbolic forms of oppression, such as gendered discourses about women and “mental illness”, which are realised in gendered interventions that individualise problems and fail to locate women’s struggles in their gender social contexts. Feminist social work also engages with the intersection of gender with sexuality, disability, class, race, ethnicity, and age in an effort to effect change for and with those who are marginalised by, and identify with, other forms of oppression in addition to gender (Laing & Humphreys, 2013).

Lastly, social workers draw on developments in feminist theory like those outlined above to inform practice across diverse fields of intervention. Our book provides examples of intersectional, poststructural, materialist, standpoint, postcolonial, black, and radical feminist practice as well as the coming together of modernist and postmodernist feminist traditions. Social workers are using these feminist theories to inform policy and practice in fields of homelessness, refugees, mental health, child wellbeing, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, ageing, and disability. Furthermore, social workers are drawing on a range of feminist ideas to open up conversations about working with Aboriginal communities, engaging and working with men, and recognising sexuality as part of social work practice.

We are seeing feminism in all its complexity and diversity in social work today. Feminism has moved away from assumptions of women as a relatively uniform and unified group with similar interests and problems. Instead, feminism now theorises difference and the contextualised experiences of women, men, and children. But at the same time, within this complexity and diversity, there are key principles, knowledge bases, and practices that are shared by feminist social workers including a commitment to social justice, the importance of a critical and reflexive stance on social work, and the valuing of personal experience as political.

Social workers are expected to respond to the most complex social problems of the day, including rising inequalities and conflict, and male-perpetrated violence and abuse (Dominelli & Ioakimidis, 2016). Feminism provides social workers with a sophisticated knowledge base from which to approach these challenges with the understanding that the struggle for gender equality and justice is ongoing and sometimes involves a refighting of battles for rights and recognition. Engaging with developments in feminism overtime, both theoretically and as a movement, has enabled social work not only to continue to focus on large scale inequalities, but also to develop innovative local practices that are nuanced, sensitive, locally specific, and relevant (Dominelli & Ioakimidis, 2016). In short, feminism continues to play a dynamic and central role in contemporary social work. Its future is also an exciting one given the growing momentum of the international women’s movement as it organises against the reassertion of male authority and privilege in numerous jurisdictions across the globe. Feminist social work, we argue, has perhaps never been so relevant and necessary as it is right now.