Pioneers of Social Work: Gender, racialization and knowledge policies in the discipline

Abstract

Recovering the history of social workers is an exercise of epistemic justice that could contribute to rethinking the professional identity of the discipline. Through a historical journey with a feminist perspective, this article analyzes how gender and racialization policies have guided knowledge policies. We attend to the processes of disciplinary sexual segregation in the institutionalization of social science: between a theoretical-academic sociology (masculinized and legitimized) and its practical-applied face (feminized and devalued) converted into social work. Likewise, we show the strategies and negotiations of the pioneers articulating, from social centers such as the Hull House, sociological research with sociopolitical reform. Specifically, we present the theoretical and practical contributions of the pioneers of social work, mainly in the United States, focusing on: Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, for their role in the institutionalization of the discipline, and on African American social workers, for the invisibility of their experiences and resistance.