Understanding how globalisation and restructuring affect women's lives: implications for comparative policy analysis

Globalisation and neo–liberal restructuring have transformed social policy and social services in many countries over the past two decades. Among the various impacts on different societies, one commonality is that many of the costs of restructuring are being picked up by women. In the last decade, feminist scholars have developed a critique of the effects of restructuring on the public and private lives of women, effects which are conspicuously absent from many discussions of restructuring. This article presents several conceptual ingredients for a framework that can facilitate a comparative understanding of restructuring and its effects on women at both global and local levels. Canada and China are used to illustrate the utility of such an approach to comparative policy analysis. The article contributes to a growing body of feminist literature on changing regimes of citizenship. It adds to the scholarship on comparative policy analysis by developing a research approach that is grounded in the experiences of women and is attentive to global and local politics. We argue that understanding just how restructuring affects different groups of women is essential for developing analyses that can cross national boundaries and challenge policies that reproduce conditions that oppress women.     

Commonality and Diversity in Feminist Social Work

Correspondence to Vicky White, Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL. Summary The relationship between feminist social workers and women serviceusers is a central concern in the feminist social work literature.The literature's discussion of feminist social worker/womanservice user relationships, along the dimensions of commonalityand diversity, is compared with the experiences and understandingsof feminist social workers who participated in a small-scalequalitative study. Two main themes are considered: first, commonalityin feminist social worker/woman service user relationships;secondly, diversity amongst women service users. Issues forfuture work are drawn out of the discussion of these themes:the problematic nature of feminist social worker/woman serviceuser commonality; the impact of social divisions other thangender on women service users' lives; the importance of unpackinggeneralizations about both women service users and feministsocial workers; the need to explore the intersections of thestatutory context and feminist social work identities. It isargued that in addressing these issues future work would beenriched if greater prominence were given to feminist practitioners'perspectives, experiences and understandings.     

Social policy and family relations: Choices for change

This article examines the relationship between social security policies and the trend toward greater equality in family life. The declining birth rate and increasing labour-force participation of women, among other factors, have altered the traditional division of labour in family life on which many social security policies were originally predicated. As the traditional guidelines dissolve, two schools of feminist thought suggest alternative ways that husbands and wives should divide their labour to fulfil domestic responsibilities. These perspectives on gender equality in family life are analysed in terms of their implications for social security policies. The merits of these approaches to policy are assessed in light of their impact on social choice, independence, self-realization, and family stability.     

The Day-to-Day Reality of Delivering Shelter Services to Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence in the Context of System and Policy Demands

ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is the most common form of gender-based violence affecting Canadian women. Women often seek help from shelters to deal with IPV and its consequences. These shelters function within a broader context that shapes how services are delivered. This study was undertaken to better understand how structural factors including policies shape shelter service delivery and reveal systemic and structural complexities that influence those services and women's ability to rebuild their lives. This feminist qualitative study combined in-depth interviews and focus groups with 37 staff and 4 executive directors from 4 shelters in Ontario, Canada, and included critical discourse analysis of salient policy texts. The findings illuminate the complexity of the structural challenges faced by abused women and the shelters that support them. Systemic impediments were shown to determine how shelters support abused women, the obstacles women face moving forward, and the extent and availability of their options. Future research should include policy evaluation of policy written and enacted, cost analysis examining the actual costs of delivering shelter services and supporting women after leaving, examination of potential alternatives to the identified structural challenges, and investigation of system coordination of services and support for abused women.     

Foster Care and Permanency an Analysis of the Context for Practice

This paper is an historical analysis of foster care, exploring its linkage with the concept of permanency in the United States (a major force in defining the direction of foster care policy) and in Australia. Use of the political economy and feminist approaches highlights the extent to which the child welfare system is based on policies which enhance social inequality, while promoting a particular ideal of the nuclear family which dichotomises mothers as good or bad.     

A Comparative Discussion of the Gendered Implications of Cash-for-Care Schemes: Markets, Independence and Social Citizenship in Crisis?

There are moves across many countries away from state-led provision of services for disabled people towards cash-based systems, which have been welcomed by disabled people as increasing choice and control over services and support, and increasing independence and social participation. However, feminist scholars have long warned about the implications of commodifying care for women, and the possible consequences of substituting cash for services for social citizenship have remained underexplored, for both disabled people generally, disabled women and mothers more particularly, and for personal assistants/care workers. This article will attempt to address that gap by carrying out a comparative literature review and policy analysis of the role of policy development and outcomes in cash-for-care schemes, looking comparatively across policy developments in several countries, as well as developed welfare states beyond Europe to examine: (a) the impact of the tensions between various governance levels, particularly local and national government; (b) the gendered impact of such policies on (for example) gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work, citizenship and social participation; (c) the impact such policies have, or are likely to have, on different groups of men and women across the life course and across different social and economic groups; and (d) how such policies can contribute to the well-being and/or detriment of different groups of women (and men) within different social, political, economic and historical contexts.     

Between Activation and Supporting Women – Alternative Operation of Welfare‐to‐work Programmes

With the emergence of activation policies, researchers are intrigued by the extent to which welfare‐to‐work (WTW) programmes reflect the ideological orientation of policymakers, while leaving the ideological orientation of their operators unexamined. This aspect may be of particular importance when women's non‐governmental organizations operate non‐coercive WTW programmes. Directing attention to the contribution of the operator, we ask how women who operate these programmes distinguish between the feminist goal of increasing women's independent access to material resources, and the activation rhetoric of ‘work first’. Moreover, as not enough is known about how participants benefit from the incongruence between the feminist discourse and the activation one, scholarship contemplating women's resistance to WTW programmes remains focused on specific welfare histories, and this form of feminist work remains neglected. The importance of the specific operators and the policy implications of the benefits of feminist operation of WTW programmes receive attention in the study reported on herein. We used a non‐coercive activation programme operated by a feminist organization in Israel (among other operators) as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how programme trainers voice their position between feminism and activation discourse, and how their form of speech enables participants to insist on decent employment as a policy issue. Implications for policy are discussed.     

Exploring Social Care: Applying a New Construct to Young Carers and Grandparent Carers

Mainstream literature on paid care for children, frail elderly people and people with chronic illness or disability, and unpaid care provided usually by family members within households and kin networks tends to establish dichotomies: formal/informal, commodified/non‐commodified. Recent feminist literature rejects these dichotomies, developing models of social care in which the interconnections of paid and unpaid care are mapped within policy frameworks. This paper uses theoretical frameworks of ‘social care‘: care as labour; care as a relationship embedded in obligation; care incurring a range of costs; to explore two case‐studies: young carers aged up to 24 years who are most often caring for a co‐resident parent; and grandparents who are the primary carers of their grandchildren. The latter may occur under the aegis of child protection authorities, or Family Court orders, or in informal arrangements, not licensed by state authorities. This analysis of the international literature and Australian research data affirms the power of the social care framework, and also shows the influence of social policy settings on informal care provision.     

Promoting a feminist policy agenda: indigenous women leaders and closet feminism

In the Southwestern United States, Hispanas and American Indian women are increasingly adopting policymaking roles in state, local, and tribal politics. This study examines the influence of gender and ethnic identity on the policy agendas of 30 women who hold public office in New Mexico. Although the findings reveal a distinct pattern of advocacy for a feminist agenda, the majority of these indigenous leaders do not identify themselves or their goals as feminist. This research indicates that women’s policy concerns transcend ethnic/race boundaries. Furthermore, to understand Hispanas’ and Indian women’s politics, and to effectively apply feminist theory to praxis, new models incorporating their practical application of feminism are needed.     

A Caring Profession? The Ethics of Care and Social Work with Older People

The feminist ethics of care present a challenge to social workersto re-assess not only the place of care within professionalsocial work practice but also the way in which concepts of justice,autonomy and rights are conceptualized and ageing is understood.In this article, the arguments for an ethics of care are consideredin relation to social work practice with older people. It isargued that the feminist ethics of care offer useful insightsthat are relevant to the practice of social work, particularlywithin contemporary demographic, economic, political and organizationalcontexts, all of which have made the task more complex and confusing.     

Child protection and research: understanding the messages

This paper contributes to the debate which has followed publication of the recent Department of Health research in child protection. From the viewpoint of one of the researchers, it surveys the criticisms presented by Nigel Parton (Parton 19%). It suggests that the problems he identifies are not irresolvable, and that improve-ments in social work policy and practice are feasible, as long as the stance taken by the researchers is correctly understood.     

Editorial: Loss and renewal

The authors review the literature that calls for the incorporation of relational theory into social work practice. Two strands of relational theory are important to developing a relational social work perspective: the psychoanalytic and the feminist. Based on a feminist understanding of relationality, Dorothy Smith has provided an alternative sociological perspective that can inform social work practice on the macro level, which she has termed institutional ethnography. In looking at ways that relational theory can inform macro practice in social work we can begin to formulate a more general relational perspective—beyond the clinical—in social work.     

Bridging the gap: feminist theory and practice reality in work with the perpetrators of child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse has been a focus of concern for feminist writers for over a decade, and social work and probation practitioners are spending an increasing amount of time undertaking intervention with men who sexually abuse children. This paper uses a review of feminist literature which identifies three contested areas in the feminist discussion: theory, power and the fixity of gender, and discusses whether these debates are reflected in any way in the interventions being undertaken with men who sexually abuse children. The conclusion reached is of a distance between theory which draws on a radical patriarchal analysis of child sexual abuse and the practice of those who attempt to work with the perpetrators of such abuse. Although some workers frame their intervention in terms of a patriarchal understanding of society and of the nature of power within this – to this extent following a radical feminist approach – there is a sense in which practitioners' use of feminist theory is only partial. Thus feminist theory is often presented as unitary and there is a sense in which practitioners who say they are espousing feminism are not in touch with the subtleties of feminist analysis revealed in the literature review. In addition, the logic of the radical feminist perspective is not followed through in practice as there is evidence of a sensitivity to difference which may be aligning practitioners with a post-modern/post-structural interpretation of men's sexual violence towards children.     

Effect of impact factor and discipline on journal data sharing policies

Data sharing is crucial to the advancement of science because it facilitates collaboration, transparency, reproducibility, criticism, and re-analysis. Publishers are well-positioned to promote sharing of research data by implementing data sharing policies. While there is an increasing trend toward requiring data sharing, not all journals mandate that data be shared at the time of publication. In this study, we extended previous work to analyze the data sharing policies of 447 journals across several scientific disciplines, including biology, clinical sciences, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. Our results showed that only a small percentage of journals require data sharing as a condition of publication, and that this varies across disciplines and Impact Factors. Both Impact Factors and discipline are associated with the presence of a data sharing policy. Our results suggest that journals with higher Impact Factors are more likely to have data sharing policies; use shared data in peer review; require deposit of specific data types into publicly available data banks; and refer to reproducibility as a rationale for sharing data. Biological science journals are more likely than social science and mathematics journals to require data sharing.     

Familiar subjects? Domestic violence and child welfare

Historically, domestic violence and child welfare have been seen as largely separate concerns. Over the last decade domestic violence has finally gained a place on social work agendas, partly as a result of linking domestic violence with child protection issues. Whilst welcoming the extent to which domestic violence is being taken seriously, we raise concerns about the dominant feminist perspectives guiding this project. We argue that current feminist theory is based on fixed and essentialist gender and generational categories which are unhelpful in understanding the complexities of family situations and family processes. Instead we argue for the relevance of relational understandings of gender, power and violence developed from feminist post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theorists. In doing so, we challenge accepted feminist understandings of domestic violence, and question the basis upon which dominant feminist approaches claim an unviolable alliance between the interests of women and children.     

Social Work and Narrative Ethics

Most accounts of social work values contain two central conceptualstrands: social work ethics and anti-discriminatory practice.Within social work, relatively little attention has been paidto the potential of feminist approaches to ethics, groundedin identity to bring these two strands together. Narrative ethicsis an approach which, like the feminist ethic of care, takesidentity as its starting point and therefore has the potentialto bridge these two distinctive approaches to social work values.However, in asserting the centrality of narrative in the constructionof our identities, it moves beyond the feminist approach. Narrativeapproaches to ethics have been widely adopted in medicine. Thispaper explores their applicability to social work practice,particularly in the light of an increasing interest in narrativeas a basis for practice intervention.     

Care: A Critical Review of Theory,Policy and Practice

‘Care’ is a source of critical tension in current social theory, and the policy and practice implications of that tension are evidenced in its current prominence on the political agenda of developed welfare states. This article critically appraises current developments in the theory, policy and practice of care, drawing on interdisciplinary developments in political theory, sociology and social policy. Developing feminist and disability‐rights theories, it explores a critical synthesis of conflicting normative and theoretical positions regarding the giving and receiving of care, and of the ethics and justice of care. It examines case studies of current comparative policy developments across a range of different welfare regimes, including the marketization/commodification and de/re‐familiaization of care, exploring ideological and normative trends in the design of contemporary policies. It discusses the impact of theory and policy on the practice of care, looking particularly at the issue of long‐term care for disabled and older adults. Finally, the authors argue for the development of a citizenship‐based approach to care that decouples it from individualistic and paternalistic paradigms that disempower those who give and receive care.     

Framing microfinance in Australia – gender neutral or gender blind?

In Australia, microfinance is gaining visibility as a distinct poverty alleviation strategy. Within the Australian microfinance policy and program discourses, the microfinance sector is framed as targeting both men and women equally. Yet at the practice level, the majority of loan recipients are women. Such a gender neutral framing is in stark contrast to microfinance policy and practices developed elsewhere. This paper explores how gender is represented in microfinance policy and practice in Australia, drawing on an analysis of the policy and practice statements of Australian microfinance programs. It is argued that the robust feminist assessments of the relationship between microfinance and gender equality that have emerged in developing countries could usefully inform Australian developments in this area of social policy, but that this shift requires acknowledging gender in the framing of the problem Australian microfinance seeks to address.     

女性主义社会工作的渊源和发展——对传统的批判及其专业性的重塑

女性主义起源于19世纪的法国,女性主义者透过实践诉求两性平权的社会,试图让女性从"父权制"中解脱出来。1970至1980年代开始,社会工作者将女性主义观点应用到实务工作中,从而产生了女性主义社会工作。女性主义社会工作通过对传统社会工作的批判,对其专业性进行了重塑,让实务者不仅使女性在能力建设、心理调适和社会支持等方面得到了提高,也使女性在宏观的社会关系变革中得到了发展。     

Teacher,Researcher and … Policy Actor? Social Work Academics’ Involvement in Social Policy

This cross‐sectional quantitative study expands the knowledge on the level of involvement of social work academics (SWAs) in social policy formulation processes, and the factors associated with this. SWAs are an interesting case for exploring the academia–policy nexus because they are affiliated with a profession in which the discourse regards social policy as a target of intervention. The study took place in Israel, where social work is strongly embedded in academia and enjoys relatively high professional status. The study drew upon a sample, which consisted of 57 per cent of all SWAs in Israel, and employed questionnaires developed specifically for the study. The findings show that the highest levels of involvement were in activities characterized by more active, public sphere routes of influence within the policy arena that were undertaken in conjunction with traditional social work partners. Social work scholars engaged in these activities more during the initial stages of the policy process. These forms of policy involvement reflect the dual impact of academia and the social work profession upon SWAs. Associated with level of involvement were individual factors, which included academic rank, perception of the social role of academia, perceived individual policy role, and perceived policy competencies. By contrast, factors linked to institutional support for policy engagement were not found to be associated with policy involvement.