ABSTRACT
Developing women-specific services requires challenging the ways the services are currently organised and provided as well as how women are viewed as service users. A gender-sensitive approach and understanding is still needed and is widely missing not only in social work but also in all welfare services, in some countries more than in others, and services specifically for women are rather marginal in the service system, especially in public welfare services. In addition to improving and developing the welfare service system in general, there is also a need for women-specific services. In many countries, NGOs rather than the public welfare service system organise services for the most marginalised groups of people, including specific services for women. What is important in developing women-specific services is to see, understand and work with the complexity of women’s vulnerable situations and their relatedness to social structures and inequalities. .
