ABSTRACT
I do not believe that it is possible to work to a blueprint in social work. Each of us brings our own unique experience to the working relationship. For me, this involves being a woman and everything that has gone into creating the person that I am. This includes a developing awareness of feminist issues, in part a result of life experience, but also through an educational process. In this I believe I share common experience with other women. I do not share this commonality with men. Men develop their personae to a large extent in relation to women: they need to appear to be stronger, tougher, more able, more powerful. Chodorow (1978), in developing ideas about gender in relation to psychoanalytic theory, suggests that men achieve masculine identity through a rejection of qualities associated with their mother. Thus masculinity becomes a polarisation of feminine qualities (Newton 1994). I feel therefore that in this interplay women have a significant role in challenging men’s perceptions of themselves.
