Neo‐liberalism and the pathologising of public issues: The displacement of feminist service models in domestic violence support services

McDonald, John R.

doi:10.1111/j.1447-0748.2005.00220.x

Cited by 38 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The opportunity derived from critical questioning of mutually exploitative, systemic constraints sets up the potential for lifeworld sustaining RPL. Not only is critical practice a strong sentiment for the students interviewed, it is also broadly affirmed in the literature of the sector (Eagen and Hoatson 1999;Hough 2003;McDonald 2005;Tett 2006).…”

Section: Development Of Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 92%

RPL practice and student disposition – insights from thelifeworld

Houlbrook

2011

Journal of Education and Work

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This paper draws on research into student experiences of recognition of prior learning RPL in the context of work-based learning (WBL) in a community services sector setting. WBL in this context is heavily reliant on recognition of prior learning (RPL). Looking at the student disposition towards RPL and access to higher education, the paper argues that developmental forms of RPL are more useful than credentialist forms, in that they sustain important, lifeworld-derived expertise. Using a critical theory-based framework, it is suggested that a form of RPL that undermines existing, potentially oppressive relations of knowledge production has benefits for non-traditional students' access to higher education. Drawing on the practice experiences from this research and contemporary commentary on RPL, specific suggestions are made as to how such a form of RPL might be accomplished. These include continued facilitation of access, vigilance against complicity in coercive practices and developing criticality. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the importance of ontological and epistemological clarity in developing RPL.

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Section: Development Of Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 92%

RPL practice and student disposition – insights from thelifeworld

Houlbrook

2011

Journal of Education and Work

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“…Given the contrast between her views and those of other workers, her statements illustrate how the ''professionalization'' of DV work is drawing in a new generation of workers without a background in the women's movement to a gender neutral model (see also Hammons, 2004;McDonald, 2005). Other workers in the study voiced concern about the type of assistance that women living with DV may receive from workers whose focus on individual culpability and ''gender neutrality'' overlooked the serious and systemic issues facing victimized women.…”

Section: Service Responses To Women's Violencementioning

confidence: 96%

“It’s an Ethical, Moral and Professional Dilemma I Think”

Salter

2015

Affilia

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This article investigates the experience and construction of women's use of violence in relationships by domestic violence workers in Sydney, Australia. Most workers contextualized women's violence within a critique of the structural powerlessness faced by women in violent relationships. However, the issue of violent women's agency remains an unresolved dilemma for workers. This article recommends the use of a psychosocial approach to understand the social, biographical, and psychodynamic dimensions of women's violence.Keywords domestic violence, empowerment, human rights, research categories, social justice, social work practice, qualitative Women's violence against men in relationships has been the subject of sustained controversy and competing discourses in Australia (Tyson, 2013) with direct impacts on policy and service responses to women in violent relationships. Reflecting its origins in the women's movement (Murray, 2002), the domestic violence sector in Australia has articulated a strong commitment to a sociocultural explanation of DV. This includes acknowledgment of gendered differences in motivation, severity, frequency, and outcomes in relational violence (Braaf & Meyering, 2013) and the differential burden of DV on women than men 1 (National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children [NCRVAWC], 2009). The current national policy focus on preventing violence against women also emphasizes the disproportionate impact of DV on women within a sociocultural perspective (Our Watch, 2014). However, the proposition advanced by men's rights groups that DV is a gender neutral phenomenon committed by women as often, or to a greater extent, than men has been Downloaded from received sympathetically by conservative legislators (Flood, 2010). Recent DV reforms in the state of New South Wales have included the redirection of funding from feminist to ''gender neutral'' service providers with instructions that DV services accommodate male as well as female DV victims (Browne, 2014). However, there is no evidence of a significant population of battered men denied care by feminist services (Flood, 2010) nor has there been any reported increase in female-perpetrated violence against male partners (see Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). Instead ongoing debates over women's use of violence in relationships are indicative of the multiple competing interpretations of DV, with implications for victimized women, the DV sector and community understandings of DV. Recent shifts in Australian public attitudes toward a view of DV as gender neutral suggest that the feminist sociocultural model is less influential than it has been in the past (Webster et al., 2014).Social work practice with victimized women who have used violence therefore remains a highly contentious area of DV work, with pro-arrest DV policies increasingly criminalizing victimized women (Braaf & Sneddon, 2007) particularly in Indigenous communities (Bartels, 2010), despite DV research emphasizing the retaliatory and self-defensive nature of mu...

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“…This change served to further individualize the situations of people who became homeless, characterizing them as customers of homelessness services, or "entrepreneurs of the self" (Rose 1999, 164) who exercise choice as consumers in the marketplace of homelessness services rather than as citizens with entitlements. The characterization of the homeless person as an individual consumer contracting with services displaces the focus from homelessness and other welfare problems as social issues, creates a focus on homelessness as an individual problem and suppresses agencies' concerns about broader structural issues (Egan and Hoatson 1999;McDonald 2005):…”

Section: Governing Homelessness Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing Homelessness: The Discursive and Institutional Construction of Homelessness in Australia

Bullen

2015

Housing, Theory and Society

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Neo‐liberalism and the pathologising of public issues: The displacement of feminist service models in domestic violence support services

Cited by 38 publications

References 12 publications

RPL practice and student disposition – insights from thelifeworld

RPL practice and student disposition – insights from thelifeworld

“It’s an Ethical, Moral and Professional Dilemma I Think”

Governing Homelessness: The Discursive and Institutional Construction of Homelessness in Australia

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