Is family therapy sexist?

There have been other powerful objections to the way systems theory and, by implication, family therapy ignore social context. These have come from feminist practitioners and practitioners who recognised that a limited understanding of systems theory prevented family therapists from working creatively with diverse and sometimes socially excluded groups. The feminist critique asserted that by concentrating upon `family', family therapists ignored the social construction of gender (McGoldrick et al. 1991). This meant that early family therapy models assumed that the gender roles evident within the `traditional nuclear family' were appropriate and enduring, whilst from a feminist point of view such roles were often constraining for women (and girls) and were part of a socially imposed patriarchy.