2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This panel discusses the gendered aspects of social work. Jennifer Cote argues that social work emerged as a tool for controlling women, and enforcing gendered social roles. The professionalizing of social work as a science offered a professional path for men, while it sidelined women to the more traditional, informal, caring, “feminine” side of the work. Julia Devin discusses the emergence of sex education in New York City’s public schools in the 1920s, and how reform groups influenced teacher training. Molly Ladd-Taylor focuses on one woman in the social-care arena, Mildred Thomson, who ran Minnesota’s “Department for the Feebleminded” (which included the eugenic sterilization program), from the 1920s to the 1950s. Thomson’s career traced the changing public attitudes to supporting families with disabled children. Jaime Wadowiec draws our attention to another social worker, in 1970s France, whose goal was to enable assimilation of Algerian immigrant families. Franca Iacovetta looks at similar challenges on the other side of the Atlantic through the work of the Toronto International Institute, to integrate immigrant families in Canada.