Navigating the gendered academy: women in social work academia

ABSTRACT

Women fare less well than men across all academic disciplines: they are less likely to be promoted, they earn less, and many more professors are men. There has, however, been little analysis to date of the experience of women in social work education, a discipline that has historically had higher representation of female staff and students. This study set out to explore women in the social work academy through a case-study of social work education in Scotland. A mixed-methods approach was used, including a review of relevant literature; an online survey of women and men academics in social work education; and semi-structured interviews with female social work leaders, past and present. The study found that women in the social work academy faced the same pressures as other women in higher education; some of these pressures were also shared by men. Most significant, however, was the extent to which women in social work academia experienced twin challenges, firstly, as female academics and secondly, as female social work academics in a discipline that struggles for recognition in the academy. We conclude that this makes for a contradictory and, at times, ambiguous experience for women as they navigate the gendered academy.     

Intersections on the Class Escalator: Gender,Race, and Occupational Segregation in Paid Care Work

As U.S. manufacturing and production industries have declined, the growth of the care sector has increasingly become an important source of jobs for workers without a college degree. Often requiring some form of postsecondary credentialing, many care occupations can provide better wages, job stability, and possible upward mobility for less educated workers. However, employment patterns in paid care work are both gendered and racialized: women and workers of color are overrepresented in care occupations with fewer entry barriers, benefits, and lower pay. Although these patterns are well documented, the mechanisms producing them are less well understood. Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), this study evaluates the explanatory power of neoclassical economic, status attainment, and social closure theories of occupational segregation for black women’s and men’s greater hazard or “risk” of entering care occupations, relative to white workers. Net of individual and closure mechanisms, significant residual effects suggest labor market discrimination remains a primary explanation for the over-representation of black workers in less credentialed care jobs with fewer benefits.     

Defining social work leadership: a theoretical and conceptual review and analysis

With the recent increase in social work leadership literature, a few issues in research and practice have come to light. Social work research employs leadership theory derived from military leadership principles adjusted for application in corporate entities, which have decidedly different goals and processes than social work organisations. These models may be influencing the methods of social work leadership research such that study outcomes reflect business-based rather than human service processes and goals. A dearth of leadership education in social work schools and in professional social work settings contributes to a paucity of social workers in upper level administrative roles. A systematic theoretical literature review on social work leadership is conducted in order to generate a working definition of social work leadership and a series of multi-level social work leadership principles. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

构建民办高校学生党建微博平台的思考

微博作为新媒体领域的一个重要平台，已经渗透到高校学生学习、生活的各个方面，其教育载体的属性已然显现。然而，目前民办高校学生党建微博平台的建设尚处于起步阶段。民办高校应充分认识构建学生党建微博平台的必要性，探索其可行性路径，思考其深层次问题，不断提高学生党建平台建设的现代化水平。     

Romanian social workers facing the challenges of neo-liberalism

ABSTRACT

With a history of almost 90 years, professional social work in Romania once flourished up until World War II. The Communist Party disbanded the profession in 1968 and it was reinstated after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Within the context of the socio-economic transition from a centralised to a free-market economy, Romanian social policy and social work have evolved from a Marxist/socialist-type ideology, one that advocates for state intervention, to a libertarian/neo-liberal-type ideology, which promotes both state withdrawal from welfare provision and individuals taking responsibility for their own welfare. These two trends continue to co-exist subject to sometimes divergent forces such as international institutions and internal Romanian social pressures. Using a qualitative approach, we explore how Romanian social workers are adapting to the neo-liberal realities and identify three types of perceived challenges: 1. those related to regulation, 2. linked with collaboration in social work activity and 3. those related to the social worker-client relationship. Under neo-liberal pressures, the social worker's role of agent of social change becomes marginalised in daily practice, leaving little power to influence agency policies that negatively impact clients.     

Interpersonal and Societal Mattering in Work: A Review and Critique

The need exists for a comprehensive literature review of the concept of mattering with regard to work. In response, this review examined a theoretical framework of societal and interpersonal mattering, mattering within the work context, and existing psychometric measures of mattering. The author analyzed the research on the current state of mattering at work, identified core frameworks and psychometric issues that have been investigated to date, and suggests the use of a more comprehensive framework for work mattering that illuminates both the relational and social aspects of the work experience. Several promising directions for future research and potential benefits of incorporating work mattering in career counseling practice emerged and are discussed.     

Using Generational Intelligence to Examine Community Care Work between Younger and Older Adults

Exploring the factors that contribute to sustainable forms of an intergenerational relationship is becoming an important conceptual and practical challenge, not least because of the growing need for an aged care workforce that is both motivated and suitably trained. Generational intelligence is a means of examining interaction between younger and older people which has been applied to community care settings. Dimensions of generational intelligence include recognising and valuing generational differences, finding common ground, plus negotiating social and practical outcomes from the situation. A case study plus a series of qualitative interviews are used to examine the value of this approach both as a means of exploring the processes involved in generational exchange and in providing recommendations for work preparation and training. It is suggested that intergenerational relations have been a missing factor in the understanding of sustainable care and that in future, service delivery should not simply be analysed as comprising professional and lay perspectives but also as containing generationally distinctive perspectives that require negotiation.     

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Postfeminism shapes the political economy of the workforce and household, constituting a re-entrenchment of traditional heterosexual gender regimes and the pressure to transgress them. Focusing on the understudied area of postfeminist masculinity, we analyze the emotional toll some fathers experience as a result of the fraught expectations to be the breadwinner, nurturing parent, and enlightened feminist spouse who completes equal domestic duties. Using empirical data of parents’ participation in a family-based health intervention, we argue that the paradoxical expectation to enact traditional gender relations and to adopt gender egalitarianism is exhausting, upsetting, and confusing for fathers. By focusing on the affective dimensions of postfeminism, we demonstrate how working to achieve the impossible expectation of doing “it all,” a bind that women have been caught in for centuries, takes an emotional toll on fathers and couples, leading to discontent at work and home, and in regard to their self-concept, parental role, and spousal relationship. We close by offering counter examples of fathers and couples who have disengaged from postfeminist parenting relations and have reached a state of contentment. Contrary to the alignment of postfeminism with positive affect, the experience of resisting postfeminist resulted in feelings of joy, pride, and satisfaction.