Same-sex intimate relationships were central to the lives of many of social work’s early women leaders. Recognizing these relationships is important to address the erasure of sexuality in the profession’s historical record and to give sexual minority social workers access to their history. This article explores conceptual issues in lesbian historical scholarship, describes the same-sex relationships of four remarkable social workers—Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, Jessie Taft, and Virginia Robinson—and calls for further research in this area.
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