ABSTRACT
The forces of globalisation have had a profound impact on social work. They have altered its raison d’être and changed its methods of working. This chapter explores the ways in which globalisation has affected gender relations in social work and argues that their major role has been to deprofessionalise and refeminise the profession. This has been done by imposing the quasi-market of the purchaser-provider split on reluctant professionals, increasing managerial control over frontline workers, undermining professional autonomy, bureaucratising the interaction between workers and ‘clients’ and excluding ‘clients’ from having either a real choice about the services they receive or having a real say in how these are designed and delivered.
Social workers, involved as they are in a locality-based profession which is deeply implicated in the structures of the nation-state, have tended to ignore the impact of globalisation on their practice. This is an unfortunate position to adopt because as I hope to demonstrate in this chapter, its effects on the profession have been profound. The gendered nature of the relations that globalisation has set in train are also very important, particularly in social work which as a profession carries a historical legacy of being considered a woman-dominated low-status entity preoccupied with carrying out ‘women’s work’.
The main concern of this chapter is to examine globalisation and the ways in which its dynamics have shaped the restructuring of social work in terms of its gendered working relations, service delivery, and education and training. I will focus primarily on the experience of the United Kingdom in laying out my arguments. But the macrolevel analysis I present resonates in16 other parts of the world (Kelsey 1997). This should not come as a surprise given that I am looking at globalisation, which implies in this case a world system of capitalist domination.
