Feminist Practice in the 21st Century

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has a history of addressing women's issues in the context of public policy, social work practice, and association processes and procedures. For example, NASW established the National Committee on Women's Issues (NCOWI) as a bylaws-mandated committee in 1975. As one of the three "equity" committees of the association, together with the National Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity and the National Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues, NCOWI develops affirmative action initiatives and monitors plans and goals, ensures that women's issues are addressed in NASW programs and policies, and encourages chapter committees on women's issues. The committee's broader mission, however, is to promote women's leadership in the profession, to promote pay equity in the profession, and to combat discrimination in the profession and in society.

NASW's current policy statement on women's issues, which the 1987 Delegate Assembly (NASW, 1994) approved to supersede the 1977 policy, calls for action in five areas: (1) human rights, (2) civil rights, (3) economic rights, (4) political rights, and (5) professional issues. When the 1996 Delegate Assembly convenes, delegates will consider a revision, which is likely to voice the continuing economic inequities and other discrimination that women face in today's society.

Society's discrimination against women is echoed in the social work profession, even though the profession is principally female. In 1991, when the NASW membership totaled 134,240, 77.3 percent of the NASW members reporting gender were female (Gibelman & Schervish, 1993). When Gibelman and Schervish (1995) analyzed the labor force data for NASW's 1991 membership, they found that the mean salaries for women were 84 percent of the mean salaries for men. Men continue to dominate leadership positions. The Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE's) 1994 directory of schools of social work listed 62 men and 51 women as deans or directors of master of social work programs and 192 men and 190 women for baccalaureate programs. In managing its progressive affirmative action program, NASW consistently has difficulty meeting goals, not for racial and ethnic diversity, but for women, in member leadership.

In their introduction to Feminist Visions, Van Den Bergh and Cooper (1986) noted the irony in this incongruency:

Social work is supposed to share many of the fundamental concerns of feminism, particularly the relationship between individual and community, between individually and socially defined needs as well as the concern with human dignity and the right to self determination. Social work, like feminism, is theoretically committed to improving the quality of life for all people. (p. 3)

Van Den Bergh and Cooper then identified five feminist principles as particularly relevant to social work education and practice, which they used as the framework for their book. Those five principles include

• eliminating false dichotomies and artificial separations
• reconceptualizing power
• valuing process equally with product
• validity of renaming
• the personal is political.

Since the book was published, thousands of students have learned from the strong theoretical and conceptual chapters in Feminist Visions.

NASW Press committee leadership and staff are very pleased to publish its sequel, Feminist Practice in the 21st Century, which we believe will enhance the profession's capacity for effective practice with women and advance the leadership of women in the profession. Eighteen excellent chapters address feminist practice within methods, fields of practice, and special populations. We hope that faculty, students, practitioners, and policy developers will find the compilation extraordinarily useful.

Linda Beebe
Executive Editor

References

Council of Social Work Education. (1994). Directory of colleges and universities with accredited social work degree programs. Alexandria, VA: Author.

Gibelman, M., & Schervish, P. (1993). Who we are: The social work labor force as reflected in the NASW membership. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Gibelman, M., & Schervish, P. (1995). Pay equity in social work: Not! Social Work, 40, 622-629.

National Association of Social Workers. (1994). Women's issues. In Social work speaks: NASW policy statements (3rd ed., pp. 268-269). Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Van Den Bergh, N., & Cooper, L. (1986). Introduction. In Feminist visions for social work. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of Social Workers.