Table Of ContentPRACTICAL
SOCIAL WORK
Series Editor: Jo Campling
WI
!BAS
Editorial Advisory Board:
Robert Adams, Terry Bamford, Charles Barker,
Lena Dominelli, Malcolm Payne, Michael Preston-Shoot,
Daphne Statham and Jane Tunstill
Social work is at an important stage in its development. All
professions must be responsive to changing social and
economic conditions if they are to meet the needs of those
they serve. This series focuses on sound practice and the
specific contribution which social workers can make to the
well-being of our society.
The British Association of Social Workers has always been
conscious of its role in setting guidelines for practice and in
seeking to raise professional standards. The conception of
the Practical Social Work series arose from a survey of
BASW members to discover where they, the practitioners in
social work, felt there was the most need for new literature.
The response was overwhelming and enthusiastic, and the
result is a carefully planned, coherent series of books. The
emphasis is firmly on practice set in a theoretical framework.
The books will inform, stimulate and promote discussion,
thus adding to the further development of skills and high
professional standards. All the authors are practitioners and
teachers of social work representing a wide variety of
expenence.
JO CAMPLING
A list of published titles in this series follows overleaf
PRACTICAL SOCIAL WORK
Self-Help, Social Work and Child Sexual Abuse
Empowerment Danya Glaser and Stephen Frosh
Robert Adams Computers in Social Work
Social Work and Mental Handicap Bryan Glastonbury
David Anderson Working with Families
Beyond Casework Gill Gorell Barnes
James G. Barber Women, Management and Care
Practising Social Work Law Cordelia Grimwood and Ruth
Suzy Braye and Michael Preston-Shoot Poppies tone
Citizen Involvement: A Practical Guide Women and Social Work: Towards a
for Change Woman-centred Practice
Peter Beresford and Suzy Croft Jalna Hanmer and Daphne Statham
Social Workers at Risk Youth Work
Robert Brown, Stanley Bute Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds)
and Peter Ford Problems of Childhood and Adolescence
Social Work and Mental lllness Michael Kerfoot and Alan Butler
Alan Butler and Colin Pritchard Social Work with Old People
Social Work and Europe Mary Marshall
Crescy Cannan, Lynne Berry and Applied Psychology for Social Workers
Karen Lyons Paula Nicolson and Rowan Bayne
Residential Work Crisis Intervention in Social Services
Roger Clough Kieran O'Hagan
Social Work and Child Abuse Social Work with Disabled People
David M. Cooper and David Ball Michael Oliver
Management in Social Work Separation, Divorce and Families
Veronica Coulshed Lisa Parkinson
Social Work Practice: An Introduction Social Care in the Community
Veronica Coulshed Malcolm Payne
Social Work and Local Politics Working in Teams
Paul Daniel and John Wheeler Malcolm Payne
Sociology in Social Work Practice Working with Young Offenders
Peter R. Day John Pitts
Anti-Racist Social Work: A Challenge Effective Groupwork
./(Jr White Practitioners and Educators Michael Preston-Shoot
Lena Dominelli Adoption and Fostering: Why and How
Working with Abused Children Carole R. Smith
Celia Doyle Social Work with the Dying
Applied Research for Better Practice and Bereaved
Angela Everitt, Pauline Hardiker, Carole R. Smith
Jane Littlewood and Audrey Mullender Child Care and the Courts
Welfare Rights Work in Social Services Carole R. Smith, Mary T. Lane
Geoff Fimister and Terry Walsh
Student Supervision in Social Work Social Work and Housing
Kathy Ford and Alan Jones Gill Stewart and John Stewart
Working with Rural Communities Anti-Discriminatory Practice
David Francis and Paul Henderson Neil Thompson
Children, their Families and the Law Community Work
Michael D. A. Freeman Alan Twelvetrees
Family Work with Elderly People Working with Offenders
Alison Froggatt Hilary Walker and Bill Beaumont (eds)
Women, Management
and Care
Cordelia Grimwood
and
Ruth Popplestone
with a chapter by Julia Phillipson
M
MACMILLAN
~) British Association of Social Workers 1993
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT O
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-55148-6 ISBN 978-1-349-22603-0(eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22603-0
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Copy-edited and typeset by Povey~Edmondson
Okchampton and Rochdale, England
Series Standing Order (Practical Social Work)
If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England
Contents
Acknowledgements Vlll
1 Setting the Scene 1
Women's talents are being wasted 3
Women are suffering discrimination 4
Important decisions are being taken by men 4
Organisations are being run to suit men 5
2 Women's Work, Care and Control 8
Caring 9
Why do men not do 'women's work'? 12
Women's work 14
Women's work in the personal social services 15
Gender and work 17
Why do women do the caring? 18
Gender and families 18
Education 19
The expectations of parents 20
The media 20
Issues of care and control in the personal social
services 21
Male and female dominated areas of work in the
personal social services 23
Hospital social work 23
Nursery work, residential day care, and care in
the community services 24
The penal system 26
3 Our Inheritance: The History of Women's Work
in the Personal Social Services 28
Women's role in the home 28
Moving into paid work 30
v
VI Contents
Women as social carers 32
Residential work 34
Developing social theory 36
Gender and race discrimination 38
4 Care and Control in Management 41
Management as control 41
Men, women and management 42
The divorce of management from caring 46
Women and promotion 49
Values and management 50
Women as managers 51
Caring and management 52
The skills of management 54
Managing work, managing self 55
5 Women's Jobs, Women's Careers 59
Ladders 59
Confidence 63
Caring as a life's work' 65
Localised work 66
Interest-led work 67
Planning careers 68
Career life planning 69
6 Getting into Management 70
The culture of organisations 70
Structure 71
Career paths 72
Values 74
Sexual harassment 75
Trade unions 76
Equal opportunities policies 78
Applying for jobs 83
Family values and female staff 83
Caring, the family and work 85
Career development 87
Training 89
Contents vii
7 Being in Management 91
What women bring to management 92
What happens to women managers 92
Organisational culture 95
Common dilemmas 98
Communication 98
Training 101
Stress 102
8 Managing with Style Julia Phillipson 104
The significance of style 104
Organisational culture and management style 105
Women's style 108
Understanding style 118
Debating the difference 119
9 Power 123
Power in organisations 123
Types of power 125
Abuse of power 129
Women, men and the abuse of power 130
Men and abuse 132
Treatment of abusers 134
Masculinity 135
Power and caring 136
Working for change 139
10 Strategies 140
Organisational strategies 140
Personal and social strategies 147
Conclusion 153
Appendix 155
References 159
Index 170
Acknowledgements
We owe a profound debt to all the women with whom we
have worked and those we have met on courses and at
conferences. Without their support and inspiration, this book
could not have been written.
We thank WISE (Women in Social Work Education) who
devoted part of a meeting to discussing the subject matter of
this book at a critical time.
Thank you to Barbara Warner, Isabella Angers and the
late John Gee for support and companionship. Thank you to
Joan Fletcher, Julia Phillipson and Nomi Rowe for their
helpful comments on the draft. Thank you to Judy Foster for
being the best possible job sharer of a management post.
Thank you to Ann Davis for supervising some of the
research.
We are grateful to the following men for their example in
opposing sexism in various contexts: Harry Marsh, now
director of 'Contact-a-Family'; Gerry Popplestone, writer;
and John Grigg, Leader of Hounslow Council 1986--7.
Finally, we gratefully acknowledge help with computing
from Derek Cohen, freelance computer expert, and Rae
Beaver and Alan Hooker at the Computer Centre of the
University of East London; also Anna Bass and her team at
the Reprographic Centre UEL for photocopying.
London
CoRDELIA GRIMWOOD
RuTH PoPPLESTONE
viii
1
Setting the Scene
Some years ago an American school teacher undertook an
interesting experiment. Her pupils learned something about
the effects of prejudice which they would remember for the
rest of their lives.
She divided her class according to whether the children had
blue or brown eyes. She proceeded to treat each group very
differently. She behaved towards one of the groups as though
they were superior, giving them a lot of praise, encouragement
and rewards, and told them how good they were. She treated
the other group as though they were unintelligent, less
valuable, unimportant, useless, and deprived them of the
things they enjoyed, such as play time. Not surprisingly, the
effect was that the children responded to her behaviour as
though they were indeed different, like a self-fulfilling
prophesy. The teacher also did similar work with adults,
with the same results. It was a powerful experience for
everyone.
If this teacher had been called in to work with a personal
social services organisation, she might have devised a training
exercise in which all the people in the group with red hair
played the role of manager for a day and she would have
repeatedly conveyed to them how important they were, how
intelligent, how powerful, and hence deserving greater rewards
than anyone else (ABC News, 1970). If such an idea were
translated into real life, it would be regarded as ridiculous:
there are relatively few people with red hair, and they have no
particular claim to management skills.
Yet we do have such a situation in the personal social
services. The majority of the staff in these organisations are
3
