El trabajo social en Aragón. El proceso de profesionalización de una actividad feminizada

Laburpena

Social Work Profession in Aragón. The process of professionalization of this female activity. Tomasa Báñez. We have used feminist perspectives and critical theory to do this doctoral thesis. Guided by feminist perspectives and critical theory, the thesis has the following aims: to try to understand the female presence in social work, to show the importance and the consequences of this female presence, to encourage my colleagues to incorporate feminist perspectives in their lessons about social work and to encourage future social workers to create a woman-centred practice. The methodological strategies of the thesis have been: 1) Studying the gender relations in the profession. 2) Paying attention to the female experiences. 3) Understanding work as a unit, which includes family work and job. 4) Historical and processual perspective. 5) Paying attention to the material and idealistic aspects of social reality. About the hypothesis of the research, the main idea of the doctoral thesis is to consider the social work profession in Aragón as a female activity as the result of changing the place where traditionally dependent people were looked after and the change of the people who did this work. In this way the social work profession was born, as a female activity with all of the characteristics of traditional female activities. That means that the natural qualities to do this work are more visible than the professional training. Social, political and economic changes in Spain during the 70's produced changes in the profession, however the female character remains. But the characteristics of the women in the profession have changed: their age, their social class, their motivations, etc. On the other hand, as a result of these changes the labour and salary conditions have improved and then there were some men who became interested in being social workers. But the male presence in the profession has not changed the female character of the profession, because male social workers occupy the traditionally male sphere that means that many male social workers work as supervisors, managers, researchers, etc. To gather information and to prove the hypothesis we have used the following research techniques: 1) In-depth interviews: We have interviewed 79 people, who have been the protagonists of the historical evolution of social work as a professional activity in Aragón, therefore their testimonies are especially relevant for my topic of research, not just because of the objective information in relationship to historic facts, but their personal definitions of the situation. 2) Observation: We have done observation to analyse the direct attention work done by men and women social workers and to verify the differences of gender in the professional relationship and in the reproduction of the traditional gender stereotypes. 3) Content analysis: We have analysed the documents from the social work schools, from the professional association, from the employers of social workers and the press articles about the social work profession in Aragón. 4) Statistical analysis: We have done the statistic analysis based on the data of the 822 members of the professional association in Aragón, in the year 2002 and on the data of the students of the social work schools. The putting into practice of these perspectives to social work in Spain is a pioneer study, because it has been carried out in other European countries, but not in Spain until now. In that sense, we hope that my work encourages other people to use these theoretical positions to analyse social work. we consider that this study, about the social work profession in Aragón, has contributed to the understanding of the female character of social work. On the other hand, we have proved my hypothesis and the usefulness of the theoretical perspectives. And finally, to do this investigation has also allowed us to analyse the gender relations in the profession and to study the consequences of the female character as defined by of the profession.