Working with Men

Feminism and Social Work

Kate Cavanagh, Viviene E Cree

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134832682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Théorie, pratique et référence de la médecine

One of feminism's key contributions to improving social work practice has been to expose the gender-blindness which has characterized social work policy and literature.
Working with Men extends and diversifies this contribution by presenting a controversial collection of essays written by feminists about men. In what has been a previously unexplored area of social work, the contributors to Working with Men, feminist academics, researchers and practitioners, explore the issue of feminist practice with men highlighting the dilemmas which they have encountered in undertaking this work. They contend that for too long feminists have ignored the issue of direct work with men. The argument that men must take responsibility for their own reconstruction they assert is no longer sustainable: feminists must generate their own discourse about the nature of men and masculinity derived from their own experience of critically engaging with and challenging men. The contributors conclude that direct work with men is a legitimate feminist activity; that it is one important strand of a broader strategy whose ultimate goal is the empowerment of women.
This book will be valuable reading for all students of social work and applied social science as well as social work practitioners and managers.

Chapter 1
Men, masculinism and social work

Viviene E.Cree and Kate Cavanagh

The study of men is big business. Over the last few years, the two or three shelves devoted to women’s studies in our bookshops have been transformed into good-sized sections on gender studies, with a whole new literature centred on men’s psychology and socialisation, men in public and private life, and men’s response to feminism. Men are now exploring their feelings, their friendships, their past and their future, their sexuality and their oppression: this new discourse owes much to the ideas and language created in the struggles of the women’s movement (Canaan and Griffin 1990).

Men within social work have inevitably picked up and developed some of these ideas, and we can see the beginnings of a new agenda for men in social work in magazines such as Working With Men and research studies on men in traditionally female settings such as childcare (Ruxton 1992). But what has feminist social work had to say about men, as clients, colleagues and social work students? We argue that the feminist social work response to date has been to ignore the issue of social work with men and instead to concentrate ideological attention on social work with women. This book sets out to change this, to begin to look at the subject of social work with men from a feminist perspective.

FEMINIST SOCIAL WORK: THE CURRENT CONTEXT

Feminism has significantly influenced the theory and practice of social work in Britain. Feminist ideas have resulted in a systematic critique of social work at many levels, including its knowledge base, value system, use of language, ideology, organisational structures, modes of intervention and service provision.

Developments within social work education illustrate the changes which have taken place. The Diploma in Social Work gave social work permission for the first time to address issues of discrimination and oppression—’to identify ideologies, structures and practices which are oppressive, and to change them’ (Phillipson 1992:8). The focus was on race, and other oppressions, for example, gender and disability tended to be combined, thereby seeming to be given a lesser priority. Nevertheless, in theory at least, the development of anti-sexist practice could potentially become a critical aspect of social work curricula. While the revised Diploma in Social Work seems likely to play down the significance of oppression, anti- disciminatory practice remains firmly on the agenda (Thompson 1993).¹

One of the key contributions of feminism to social work has been to highlight the gender-blindness which has characterised social work policy and literature. Social work literature in the 1960s and 1970s was curiously non-specific in its targets of intervention, creating an impression that social workers were working with whole families, while in practice, social work remained an activity which provided services for a largely female population. Feminist ideas influenced and provided a critique of the ‘radical’ social work movement of the 1970s and 1980s (Bailey and Brake 1980; Langan and Lee 1989). Feminist social work theory has drawn attention to women’s central position in the social work discourse as it has been formulated (Brook and Davis 1985; Hale 1984).

Feminist social work literature has explored different areas related to this central theme. Some writers have concentrated on recovering the historical origins of social work in women’s philanthropic activity in the nineteenth century. Here the assertion is that social work has always been a woman’s profession, and that man’s arrival in social work has led to a defeminising of its activities and value-base. This has been explained as part of the professionalisation process—that men’s participation in social work has coincided with social work’s expansion and bureaucratisation. Women have been systematically excluded from the new positions of authority in social work (academic and work-based) as social work has become an increasingly attractive and highstatus profession (Chafetz 1972; Brook and Davis 1985; Beagley 1986; Howe 1986).

There has also been a powerful critique of women in relation to the welfare state in general and social work in particular. Feminists have drawn attention to sexist attitudes implicit in social welfare policy and practice, and to the existence of powerful patriarchal structures which oppress women as service-users and service-deliverers (Wilson 1977 and 1980; Barrett 1980; Dale and Foster 1986; Pascall 1986). Much traditional social work practice has been based on unchallenged assumptions and negative stereotypes about women in their role as wives and mothers. Women are held to be responsible not only for their own lives, but also for those of their children, their partners and their dependent parents. Community care policy can be seen as part of the Conservative government’s programme aimed at reducing state provision whilst making families (very often women) more responsible for the care of dependent relatives. Given this understanding, feminists have sought to establish more supportive and non-oppressive ways of meeting the needs of individuals and society (Walker 1982; Finch 1984).

Others have examined the differential treatment of women and men (girls and boys) in the statutory social work and criminal justice systems. Research has indicated that the sexual double-standard which assumes different rules of behaviour for women and men is still very much alive and influencing social work practice and decision-making today. Girls are still more likely to be removed from home because of their ‘moral’ well-being; women are still more likely to be imprisoned for lesser offences (Carlen 1983 and 1988; Gelsthorpe 1987; Hudson 1995).

At the same time as feminist social work theory has concentrated on putting women back on the social work agenda, feminist practitioners have devoted their attention to valuing and developing their work with women. Many social workers (including ourselves) who cut their feminist teeth in consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s began to look in the 1980s at ways of empowering the working-class women and girls with whom they were working. Current services were not adequately meeting the needs of our women clients who were pathologised and/or blamed. Some of us therefore turned to developing ‘alternative’ projects—women’s groups, girls’ groups and small-scale development projects around issues such as sexuality, violent partners and women’s health. Some projects leaned towards the self-help, co-operative model of Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis. Others were more therapeutic in style, developing feminist counselling methods (Chaplin 1988). Inevitably it has been more difficult to incorporate a ‘woman-centred practice’ (Hanmer and Statham 1988) into mainstream statutory services, but many women have done so, albeit with frustrating and exhausting implications for themselves. Feminist social workers working for the local authority have found themselves faced with an uphill struggle to have their work recognised and supported (Wise 1990).

MASCULINISM IN SOCIAL WORK

While feminism in social work has been struggling to achieve recognition, a new phenomenon in the form of the ‘men’s movement’ has been developing. Masculinism has taken off in Britain and is today competing with and challenging feminist assumptions and ideas.

The men’s movement in Britain was born in the late 1970s in response to the growing influence of the women’s movement. Initially sympathetic to the oppression of women and acknowledging their part in that oppression, some men gathered in unusual conference with one another and, through a process of ‘self-deconstruction’, discussed the ways in which they oppressed women and explored the limits which patriarchy placed on the role of men (Tolson 1977). The early movement was essentially profeminist with supporters allying themselves to particular forms of oppression against women—for example, Men Against Violence Against Women; Men Against Sexism (Snodgrass 1977). While the motives of these men were laudable, the response by others to their position was met with no mean smattering of ridicule, incredulity and disbelief.

The late 1980s saw a rebirth of academic sociological interest in masculinity which continued to be largely pro-feminist (Hearn 1987; Chapman and Rutherford 1988; Brittan 1989). However, following publication of Robert Bly’s Iron John in 1990 in the United States and 1991 in Britain, there has been a significant shift in the volume and content of literature on masculinity. A new masculinist literature has emerged to compete with profeminist ideas on masculinity: a new literature in which men extol traditional, patriarchal, hierarchical visions of ‘true masculinity’, and women are blamed for castrating men and for keeping men apart from one another. The new rallying cries are all about ‘learning to get in touch with feelings’, about ‘finding your inner man’, about ‘bonding with other men’ (Thomas 1993; Lyndon 1992)—bell hooks (1992) identifies that the most frightening aspect of the contemporary men’s movement is the ‘depoliticization of the struggle to end sexism and sexist oppression, and the replacing of that struggle with a focus of personal self-actualisation’ (1992:113)

But the new men’s movement is more disquieting still. Not only does it not see itself as a response to feminism—as growing out of, and sharing a commitment to the aims of feminism—it is actively anti-feminist, and blames feminism for what it perceives as the demasculinisation of men. Faludi (1992), in her vivid account of the undeclared war against women, highlights the ways in which there has been a deliberate attempt to halt, and where possible to eradicate, the progress made by feminists on the hazardous road to equality. She regards the growing influence of the men’s movement as part of an attempt to divide and isolate women at a critical point in their struggle for independence, equality and autonomy.

The impact of pro- and anti-feminist masculinist ideas in social work practice is growing. Historically the study of men had little place on the social work agenda. There have been some attempts by men to analyse men’s place within social work’s institutional structures (Walton 1975; Kadushin 1976; Howe 1986). Feminists have also shown consistent commitment to studying and drawing to public attention issues around male violence (Dobash and Dobash 1979; Hanmer and Maynard 1987; Scully 1990), around sexual abuse (Kelly. 1988), around men’s use of pornography (Dworkin 1981). But there has been little analysis of gender and men in relation to day-to-day social work practice. It is only in very recent years that a critique of men in social work has emerged, beginning with the publication in 1985 of Bowl’s Changing the Nature of Masculinity, and illustrated by subsequent research which examines men in less stereotypically ‘masculine’ activities, such as caring for elderly dependants or working in childcare settings (Arber and Gilbert 1989; Ruxton 1992).

Today male social workers are increasingly involving themselves in, and dominating, social work with men. They are pressing for men-only activities—for example, men’s groups and boys’ groups—and masculinist themes (both pro- and anti-feminist) are beginning to appear in student social workers’ essays and dissertations. There is in parallel with this a new rhetoric of ‘men’s rights’ being rehearsed, as men assert their experiences of discrimination, witnessed in the congregation of men to fight the Child Support Act.

Unconnected with the men’s movement, a new interest in men is emerging from government initiatives which promote new policies focusing on offending behaviour.² Cognitive behavioural approaches have become prominent as a means of intervening in work with male offenders. These perspectives, like those of the new men’s movement, have been criticised for failing to address wider ethical, social and political issues (Sheldon 1995).

WORKING WITH MEN IN SOCIAL WORK

This is the world in which we, feminist practitioners and academics, find ourselves working. Feminism has rightly placed women at the centre of the social work agenda and has energised and encouraged women practitioners in their work with women. But at the same time, it has provided a rationale for opting out of work with male clients. The uncomfortable implications are that men’s behaviour may have gone unchecked and that we may have played a part in reinforcing stereotypes about women’s caring role within the family and within the social welfare net. Feminist explanations for not working with men may be expressed differently from conventional social work rationales for not doing so, but the outcome is the same—men’s attitudes and behaviour towards women are left unchallenged.

In reality, in our private and professional lives, the great majority of us do relate to and work with men: only a very small percentage of social workers have no contact with men. Men are our bosses, our colleagues, our students and often our clients, notably if we are employed in criminal justice work, but also in community care and with children and families. This routine work with men has so far been unexplored in the feminist social work literature. Just as community care has been characterised as being principally about care by women, so social work has been said to be centred on work with women. The impact of this ‘men-blindness’ has been to leave a prominent area of social work unexplored and to diminish the complexity of the feminist analysis of gender in social work.

But there is another point at issue. In spite of a lack of feminist theoretical investigation of men in social work, increasing numbers of feminist social workers have chosen to work with men. They have done so with the expressed intention of entering areas of practice which consciously set out to confront the nature of sexism at its source, that is, to change men’s behaviour, as the contributors to this volume illustrate. This work has extended well beyond a consideration of incorporating feminist ideas about men into theoretical frames of reference. Scully reinforces this message. She argues that ‘the de-bunking of patriarchy is not accomplished by focusing exclusively on the lives and experience of women’ (1990:3).

The outcome of the reluctance of feminist social work to address work with men has been that the feelings of isolation of women working with men have increased. We have found ourselves marginalised, challenged about our values, our beliefs and our feminism, by feminists and non-feminists alike. ‘Real’ feminists don’t work with men. Fearing criticism and misunderstanding, we have been reluctant up to now to debate this taboo subject.

Whilst orthodox feminist social work has prioritised work with women, male social workers have been encouraged to take responsibility for their own and their clients’ ‘reconstruction’. This is another area of concern. How satisfied are we with the consequences of this work? Can we trust men to do this effectively? How can we evaluate this work if we have no part in it? These are important questions. The anti-feminist tone in much of the new masculinist literature warns against any complacency.

The feminist discourse around working with men must now be opened up. If feminism is about making judgements and acting upon them, about critical reflection and a programme of change, then it must extend its focus to practice with men. The absence of a feminist discourse around working with men leaves social work wide open to masculinist interpretations of the pro-feminist and anti-feminist variety, and whilst the latter is by far the more damaging to women, we must not assume that the former is to our advantage. The question is no longer ‘do we work with men?’ but ‘how do we work with men?’

NOTES

1 The Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work’s Paper 3 which revises the expectations for the Diploma in Social Work is less radical than its predecessor, Paper 30, in its acceptance of ideas of oppression and anti-oppressive practice. It does, however, still contain a commiment to anti-discriminatory practice.

2 The National Objectives and Standards for Social Work in the Criminal Justice System prepared by the Scottish Office in 1991 require social workers to focus on offending behaviour.

Chapter 2
A prison perspective

Jo Knox

This chapter is a personal account of the dilemmas I have faced in working with men in prison, and an exploration of how I have sought to work with them. It does not set out to provide a definitive framework for social work in prisons. Feminist ideas and practices have added a new dimension to the arena of working with men, particularly in the field of sexual and physical violence towards children and women, creating a dynamic vehicle for intervention. I hope to contribute to this process by examining an area of work which social workers are increasingly recognising as a legitimate and appropriate focus for resources.

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.

My development to adulthood was undoubtedly influenced by having a mother as sole active parent. Her marriage breakdown and subsequent career achievement left me with a view that men were largely peripheral to life. Emerging at seventeen years of age from a girls-only school and this matriarchal background, I think I was oblivious to women’s subordinate role in relation to men. Subsequent work experience made me conscious of the career limitations placed on women. Early in my working life, the realities of sexual violence and the victimisation which women experience in the court process impacted on me for the first time. Aged twenty and serving in the Women’s Royal Air Force, I acted as ‘professional friend’ to a young woman who had experienced a serious sexual assault and attended the court martial of her attacker. I still remember with absolute clarity the feelings of anger engendered by the attempts of the defence, in an all-male court room, to justify the perpetrator’s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figure and Tables
• Contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Men, masculinism and social work
• Chapter 2: A prison perspective
• Chapter 3: Working with the CHANGE men’s programme
• Chapter 4: Challenges in working with male social work students
• Chapter 5: Why do men care?
• Chapter 6: Interviewing violent men Challenge or compromise?
• Chapter 7: Helping men to cope with marital breakdown
• Chapter 8: Sexuality, feminism and work with men
• Chapter 9: Building fragile bridges Educating for change
• Chapter 10: Working with boys
• Chapter 11: Moving on
• Bibliography