Negotiating the uncomfortable intersections between gender and professional identities in social work

Abstract

This article is based on a study of men’s relationship to the social work profession in the North-West of England. It argues that men’s presence in the social work profession is accounted for in discourses of career motivation, of career choice, and of men social workers as heroes and/or ‘gentle-men’. The article considers how these negotiations between gender and professional identities might contribute to debates about the detraditionalization of gender and work identities in late modernity.