Miradas feministas y/o de género al Trabajo Social, un análisis crítico

Resum

In this article I intend to reflect on the gender and / or feminist perspective in social intervention, an issue only recently explored in the Spanish context (see Báñez Tello, 1997, Lorente Molina, 2002a; Fombuena Valero, 2006). Assertions like "Social Work is inherently feminist" (Collins, 1986), argue that the values and ethics of social work are very close to feminist principles (Bricker-Jenkins y Hooyman, 1986; Van Den Bergh y Cooper, 1986; Dominelli y MacLeod, 1999 [1989]). These principles connect not only with the denunciation of social inequalities but aim at transforming them accordingly in order to make a society based on social justice. But what do I mean by feminist Social Work? Is there a single way of doing feminist Social Work? The implementation and development in our public policy context around gender inequalities has skirted this debate, even if the theoretical aspects are still being developed. This article does not intend to answer these questions but to encourage discussions on how to articulate two projects that, from their beginnings, have been linked with the struggle for the abolition of inequalities. These are debates that are present in the discussion of contemporary perspectives of social work (Healy, 2001) and which I consider central if we intend to go beyond certain elements of social control that the State imposes on Social Work.