Are We Bridging the Gap? The Social Work Practice of Critical Feminism

In recent editorials, Affilia has emphasized how critical feminist inquiry offers powerful frameworks for challenging unjust power structures and social systems (Gibson et al., 2024; Goodkind et al., 2021; Jackson et al., 2024; Karandikar et al., 2024). Moreover, critical feminism highlights the interconnectedness of various forms of oppression, subjugation, exploitation, and moral panic that emerge across and respond to categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, and geography. For social workers, understanding and critiquing power and oppression are key to understanding clients’ experiences within broader societal contexts.

Indeed, critical feminist frameworks are vital to developing social work responses within global socio-political landscapes that face the resurgence of fascist and authoritarian ideologies (Lee & Johnstone, 2021; Plange & Alam, 2023; Truell, 2018). The barrage of recent legislation that seeks to control and attack bodily sovereignty, criminalize the unhoused, detain those forced into migration, expand surveillance, exploit natural resources with impunity, and diminish rights and democracy, reflects the rising movement of the right (Abramovitz et al., 2022; Beck et al., 2024; Butler, 2024; Cheney & Rotabi, 2024; García Hernández, 2020; Garrett, 2021; Grant Pass vs Johnson, 2024; Whelan, 2022). Social work scholars, therefore, must not only engage with critical feminist theorizing and ways of knowing but also practice critical feminist social work. As Marx and Engels (1846) asserted, ideas and thoughts alone are not enough to produce change; human action is needed. More than ever, critical feminist interventions, practices, and guidelines that counter harmful policies and support the liberation and joy of marginalized and oppressed communities must take center stage in social work scholarship.

A decade ago, Affilia editors Ortega and Busch-Armendariz (2014) asked ‘Can we produce critical feminist interventions in an evidence-based environment when those interventions are designed to challenge the dominant economic and political ‘truth’ that challenges the sociopolitical structure?’ They concluded that social workers must do more to develop, evaluate, and write about interventions that stem from feminist praxis. In this spirit, when authors submit to Affilia, our reviewers ask them not to forget the social work application -- after all, the heart and soul of social work is in practice. While some argue that social work at its core is already feminist, our notions of feminism are frequently troubled, contested, and mutable (BlackDeer, 2023; Cree, 2018). Thus, the question continues and must remain a living one, where we ask, ‘Are we bridging the gap from critical feminist theory to critical feminist practice in ways that meet the moment?’

This editorial considers select examples of recent Affilia articles that examine critical feminist practice across the micro, mezzo, and macro social work spheres. These are examples of critical feminist social work praxis taking on contemporary and diverse social issues such as climate activism, body liberation, political and labor activism, digital support work, anticarceral work, work with LGBTQ+ youth, community work, and rural economic empowerment. Focusing on who is doing the work and how they are doing so not only provides roadmaps to guide such practice but also offers hope, especially for social workers practicing in hostile states and institutions.

From Theory to Practice in a Global Context

The authors of these articles made strong links between critical feminist theory and social work practice in a changing global context. The climate crisis and the existential threat it poses provide a crucial area for feminist social work practice. In ‘Doing Hope: Ecofeminist Spirituality Provides Emotional Sustenance to Confront the Climate Crisis,’ Bell et al. (2022) interview ecojustice workers whose practice is grounded in ecofeminist spirituality – an approach concerned with ecological and feminist issues that highlights the interconnected subjugation of women, colonized people, and the planet. Ecojustice workers are driven by a commitment to stay in places that have been harmed and to create more sustainable and healing ways to live there. This study brings attention to the emotional work of ecojustice practice, and shares the strategies that people employ to remain engaged, cope, stay the course, take action, and cultivate hope.

The field of social work operates across a spectrum of ideological beliefs, from reformers to abolitionists, with social workers taking on varying institutional roles and initiatives to address the problem of mass incarceration. LGBTQ+ youth have disproportionately higher rates of police surveillance, contact, and arrest; they receive harsher punishments and are incarcerated at higher rates than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. Hereth and Bouris’ (2020) article, ‘Queering Smart Decarceration: Centering the Experiences of LGBTQ+ Young People to Imagine a World Without Prisons,’ argues that social workers who are concerned with the Smart Decarceration Initiative – an initiative responding to the Grand Challenges commitment to ending mass incarceration – should engage feminist, queer and abolitionist frameworks across theory, politics, and organizing. Through the case studies of BreakOut!, the TJLP, and Black & Pink, Hereth and Bouris examine how organizations incorporate and build upon anti-carceral feminism and queer theory in organizing, mobilizing campaigns, generating collective action, and developing grassroots projects that are engaged with and led by LGBTQ+ people of color.

Increasingly, and most recently propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, digital support has become an accessible form of delivering human services interventions to young people. How do feminist-informed practices take shape in digital spaces? In ‘Sisterhood at a Distance: Doing Feminist Support Work Online,’ Bäckström Olofsson and Goicolea (2024) explore this question. They examine the work of female supporters working in young women's counseling centers in Sweden that aim to apply feminist principles of sisterhood in online counseling with young women and transgendered youth. In exploring the ‘characteristics, challenges, and possibilities’ of feminist notions of sisterhood in online work, the authors' findings indicate that equality, trust, safe spaces, and the hows and whys of sharing experiences are complicated, and must be renegotiated in digital settings.

How do we define socially reproductive and transformative community work? And how should such definitions be applied to the community work done by Black women? In ‘Uncovering the Transformative Labor in Black Women's Community Work,’ Swanson and Carreon (2024) introduce a new conceptual framework, the Continuum of Transformative and Reproductive Labor (CTRL), to examine the multiple, often invisibilized forms of labor done by racialized women as they engage in community work. Swanson and Carreon present historical and contemporary cases within two different contexts to examine Black women's labor in the community and their capacity to transform social systems and resist the reproduction of racial and gender hierarchies.

Social work has deep roots in labor organizing. In the editorial ‘It would be foolish to pretend that our jobs aren't political: Social Workers Organizing for Power in the Nonprofit Sector’ by Zelnick et al. (2022), the authors interview two labor organizers to learn about strategies employed by social service workers as they attempt to address unjust labor conditions in the US. Such work situates present struggles in the organizing history of social service workers and urges a collective and politically astute set of practices for the future.

How can our work with clients conflict with critical feminist values and how can we push back against practices that cause harm? Sorensen and Krings (2023) address these questions and assess the role of social work in weight loss work. Their conceptual paper, ‘Fat Liberation: How Social Workers Can Incorporate Fat Activism to Promote Care and Justice,’ asks social workers to critique ideas and practices that enforce harmful norms around weight and body shape. These authors challenge social workers and their professional organizations to ‘critically examine and disrupt engagement with anti-fat interventions instead of perpetuating weight stigma and anti-fat discrimination.’ The authors deconstruct cultural understandings of fatness, offer a brief history of the fat activism movement, and discuss how social work risks contributing to anti-fat bias.

Finally, how are social workers addressing the economic struggles and health inequities experienced by women in the Global South? In Najjuma and Yates's (2024) article,‘Economic Empowerment for Enhanced Health Equity: A Qualitative Study of Women Living with HIV in Wakiso District, Uganda,’ the authors look at the positive economic and health effects of economic empowerment groups that social workers conducted collaboratively with women who are living with HIV. Such interventions offer exciting examples of approaches that cross sectors and modalities to attend to the specific needs of communities.

Closing

Undoubtedly feminist social work practices come up against the realities of institutional constraints, policies, and funding limitations. Nevertheless, the work that authors have shared in Affilia demonstrates that practitioners have been negotiating and navigating these realities as they implement feminist-informed interventions. Persistence and creativity are essential to forging a more just and sustainable future. So too is connection, and through feminist scholarship we can build our networks and our knowledge of what is possible, and who we can call upon for support.

More than ever the geopolitical context demands critical feminist social work practice. By centering feminist values, social work not only critiques and resists harmful practices but also actively promotes resilience, equity, and collective empowerment. Moreover, feminist social work practices call for reflection, advocacy, policy engagement, collaboration, global solidarity, and mutual aid. We are eager to hear from practitioners, educators, and scholars who have ideas and examples to share. We call on those engaged in feminist practices to submit work to Affilia that examines and shines light on feminist interventions in our field. Let's generate feminist practices that build bridges from words to actions, and from theory to practice, ensuring that critical ideas continue to stir up and sustain the practices that our communities so desperately need.