ABSTRACT
Women played an outsized role in developing social work organizations. The chapter reminds the reader just how oppressive the role was allotted to middle-class women in the domestic sphere, and the enormous strength required to develop independent, productive roles in the public sphere and society at large. The predicament facing single women was particularly acute. Women’s settlements of the late 19th century provided a community in which relationships and friendship could flourish while offering local communities a range of activities for mothers and children that distinguished them from male settlement houses. The chapter shows the important links between women’s settlements and the first university-based social work training courses. It considers the origin of hospital social work in the lady almoner and the first attempts to understand the experiences of working-class mothers as family support policies were advanced by the likes of Eleanor Rathbone.
