Women, Oppression and Social Work: Issues in Anti-Discriminatory Practice

Many of the gains of the women's movement over the past 20 years now seem threatened by the combined effects of prolonged economic insecurity, reductions in the scope of welfare provision and a general shift in the climate of public opinion to the right. Social workers are faced with the growing damands of a more inpoverished and more unstable society, with less resources to meet these demands. In response to these pressures, feminist social work has begun to move beyond some of the limitations of both the traditional and radical social work models of the past. The emerging anti-discriminatory model recognizes the diversity of oppresions according to race, gender and class as well as those of age, disability and sexual orientation. Women, Oppression and Social Work offers a new perspective on feminist social work which takes account of the complexity of the manifold oppressions that affect the lives of most women and most social work clients.