Power, Gender, and Social Work Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

This article reports on a study that used qualitative interviews with 10 social workers about their therapeutic practice with women who were sexually abused as children. It explores two dominant discursive themes that were identified in the analysis: normalizing the effects of childhood sexual abuse and gender power in practice. The analysis found that while engagement with narrative therapy brings a strong emancipatory orientation, normalizing the effects of abuse by distinguishing them from “real” mental illness comes at the cost of restigmatizing other groups of clients, and dualistic understandings of feminism and post-structuralism narrow engagement with the complex ways in which gender power operates in women’s lives.