ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the contribution of feminism to social work practice. It provides an overview of feminism’s intellectual base and how feminist knowledge continues to contribute to the evidence base of social work. The chapter outlines the major ideas emerging from third wave feminism, and identifies practice principles from such ideas. It outlines the value and impact of feminism in social work. Feminism draws on a range of philosophical and political approaches to problem and problem-solving through engagement with modernist and postmodernist orientations. Third wave feminism has been expressed as dialogue across social and cultural contexts in an effort to challenge, transform and abolish material, political and social power structures and systems. Poststructural feminism has emerged in social work as a response to past feminist thinking, which tended to universalize the experiences of women. Transnational feminism has been identified as engagement with social, economic and political struggles that relate to dominance and exploitation in terms of colonial and national contexts.
