Teaching Gender in Social Work

The need for a book on teaching gender in social work arises from the fact that social work education often fails to incorporate gender, even though most of the people that use social work services are women, a majority of social workers are women, and women have had throughout history a significant role in the establishment of social work. The profession of social work started to emerge early in the twentieth century, when femininity was constructed in a way that supported the public/private division. This applied, in particular, to a woman’s body and her appearance, to her morality, sexuality and motherhood, which in turn determined her social opportunities.

Social work played a role in these processes in various ways, depending on the prevailing beliefs about women and femininity. For social work it is important to understand primarily the mechanisms that produce and reproduce social inequalities, and in our case the inequalities between the genders. Teaching Gender in Social Work contains articles that address these issues.