Title: Feminist Social Work Practice | Encyclopedia of Social Work
Headings: Feminist Social Work Practice
Feminist Social Work Practice
Summary
Keywords
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Updated in this version
Defining Feminism and Its Scope
Table 1. Feminist Movement Waves and Primary Foci from the United States
Table 2. Perspectives, Primary Causes of Women’s Inequality and Oppression, and Examples of Strategies from Second Wave Feminism
Core Principles of Feminist Social Work
Current and Future Trends in Feminist Practice
Links to Digital Materials
References
Other Resources

Content: Reger, 2012 ). Fourth wave feminists are more cognizant of global feminist efforts and the need to deconstruct dominant Western feminist narratives (Rademacher & Fallon, 2017 ). Table 1. Feminist Movement Waves and Primary Foci from the United States
Wave and Time Period
Primary Foci
First Wave—19th and early 20th century
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Women’s suffrage
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Basic legal rights such as property ownership
Second Wave—1960s to 1980s
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Range of issues particularly violence against women, reproductive health, equal rights amendment and equity legislation
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Established various women-centered organizations such as feminist health centers, sexual assault centers, domestic violence shelters, women’s bookstores, women’s credit unions, and women’s art spaces
Third Wave—1990s to 2010
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Individual self expression
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Promotion of diversity
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Sex-positive initiatives
Fourth Wave—2013 to present
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Intersectionality
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Reproductive rights
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Violence against women, especially sexual harassment through the #MeToo movement
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Strategic use of social media as tool of feminist education, outreach and organizing
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Table 2. Perspectives, Primary Causes of Women’s Inequality and Oppression, and Examples of Strategies from Second Wave Feminism
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Perspective
Primary Causes of Inequality and Oppression of Women
Strategies or Actions
Liberal
Denial of access and opportunities due to sex-role stereotyping or structural barriers or both
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“Let us in”—integration of women
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Legal remedies to secure and extend women's rights (for example, employment and education equity legislation)
Radical
Concept of “sex caste”—women subordinated because of male supremacy and cultural patriarchy
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Modeled after black power movements
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Consciousness-raising
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Collectivist or consensus orientations to power
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Politicized approach to alternative services (for example, rape crisis centers, health clinics)
Socialist
Intersection of gender and class, specifically in disparities resulting from labor market and other economic structures
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Social protest, with emphasis on economic issues especially for poor and low-income women (for example, welfare rights)
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Partnerships with labor union efforts
Cultural
Societal denial and repression of women’s inherent, and superior, ability to nurture
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Create and sustain separate spaces and own culture that would promote female biology as the basis of women's power
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Maternal or caregiving feminism
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Entrepreneurial ethos that promotes “women as women” (for example, women's bookstores)
Womanist
Intersection of race and gender, with emphasis on unique “double jeopardy” of women of color
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Combination of strategies that address needs of women of color
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Critiques of racism within feminist analyses and practices
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An important theoretical development that began as a critique of feminist analysis and is now central to analytical frameworks is the concept of intersectionality—a praxis grounded in the interaction and multiplicity of cultural identity components. Informed by womanist perspective theorists (see Collins, 1990; Combahee River Collective, 1981; hooks, 1984; Smith, 1979 ), critical race legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw argued that gender oppression was shaped by racial hierarchies, such that women of color experience a duality of oppressions that white women do not and that only or primarily focusing on gender oppression marginalized the experiential subordination of women color. She termed this analytical construct intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989 ).