Commonalities and Diversities Between Women Clients and Women Social Workers

Abstract

We agree with Audre Lorde when she said:

It is a lifetime pursuit for each one of us to extract these distortions from our living at the same time as we recognise, reclaim, and define those differences upon which they are imposed. For we have all been raised in a society where those distortions were endemic within our living. (1984, p. 116)

Chapter 2 develops the themes of commonalities and diversities between women. It begins by exploring generic issues, with the aim of relating these themes to practice and the organisation of services. This is followed by commonalities between women workers and service users, and their implications for practice. Diversities between women workers and service users are explored next, in particular employment and unemployment, black and minority ethnic women, disabled women and age. Feeling powerful and powerless and the social and personal conditions associated with these responses are presented as part of recognising and acknowledging commonalities and differences between women workers and service users. The centrality of recognising diversity through commonality for women-centred practice is then introduced.

Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over another and thereby the right of dominance.Ageism, Heterosexism, Elitism, Disablism, Classism. (Lorde, 1984, p. 115)