Conversations about theory: Feminism and social work

This chapter shows how feminism and social work have evolved over time in similar ways in response to complex debates and competing ways of knowing. It shows how feminism enables the development of sophisticated understandings and responses to the problems faced by women. It then elaborates the contribution of feminism to more nuanced understandings of domestic violence, followed by critical feminist analysis of few key social work practice theories and their implications for working with women. The chapter shows how feminism provides, with a social work identity that comes from critical social work, which questions taken-for-granted ideas and arguments. Modernism and post-modernism denote a range of theoretical orientations characterising particular periods of thought in the twentieth century. Modernism captures ideas and values that rest on strong notions of order, and the belief in unity, progress and rational scientific objectivity. Attachment theory has been taken up in social work because if offers a life-course perspective.