ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have explored the contexts within which women social workers are located. Chapters 3 and 4 highlighted the centrality of the state context and the way in which that context constrains and shapes women social workers’ practice. Chapter 5 reviewed key developments in social work education, focusing particularly on the place accorded to social divisions, including gender. Through these often contentious and contested developments in the contexts of women social workers’ practice, they have been exposed to an agenda around anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory practice. Chapters 1 and 2 considered how women social workers and their practice are positioned in the feminist social work literature. It became apparent that the overriding emphasis in the literature is on the possibility and desirability of women social workers identifying with the term ‘feminist’, as an identity that provides a stance from which to engage in egalitarian relationships with women service users that are aimed at their empowerment. This chapter explores women social workers’ experiences of identities, identifications and stances, whilst Chapter 7 pursues egalitarian relationships and empowerment. Before turning to women social workers’ experiences, the different approaches taken by writers to the ways in which terminology can represent particular identifications and stances are considered.
