Does the social work emphasis on family disadvantage women clients in the workplace?

A social worker,  Dr Khiswar Dhingra, is reported in a news report from Lahore, Pakistan, commenting on the various disadvantages women experience in the workplace, even though they constitute 40% of the global workforce. This interesting report covers a lot of ground, and it's good to see it coming up in a country that is strongly influenced by Islamic culture that values women in ways that may not help them in the workplace.

In particular, social protection is often less available for women than men to cover disruption in their lives that affects their capacity to work. I often wonder whether the social work concern for good family care bears unreasonably heavily on women than men, and this then disadvantages them in their work. One of the interesting points in the article is that women have more difficulty in meeting high standards in their work lives because of their home responsibilities.

Link to Lahore News report

We must express social work knowledge and understanding so that it is open to interpretation into other cultures

The International social work conference in the summer led to a lot of material on international socila work appearing in the Guardian; one article by a Flemish academic, Joke Knockaert, discusses some of the issues, referring to a Flemish government policy 'Brains on the move', which wants to ensure that one in three Flemish students gets international experience.

But as Gurid Aga Askeland and I argue in our book and articles about globalisation and social work education, it is a naive expectation to think that 'travel broadens the mind' is an appropriate policy in a profession which is partly constructed by policy and legal developments in countries and the cultural expectations in both countries and ethnic and cultural groups.  We have to work hard at expressing our research and understanding in terms that are open enough so that it can be interpreted by people from other cultures into knowledge and understanding that is relevant to them.

Link to Guardian article

Getting political attention for high workloads in Massachusetts

Massachusetts social workers are still campaigning over the inefficiencies and poor quality care resulting from high caseloads and inadequate resourcing of social work. they were able to give evidence of a lot of problems to a political audit panel. I don't hear a lot of this sort of evidence coming to political notice in other countries, or locally, but social services are under pressure everywhere.

Link to the Massachusetts press report

Orange tide: Spanish campaign on austerity cuts in social services

A campaign called 'Orange Tide' has been trying to defend social services from austerity cuts in Spain, and claims some success in preventing progression to more vicious cuts.

Link to You Tube video of Orange Tide demonstration.

Link to Guardian article, interpreting developments for British interest.