Social Work

“ . . . there would appear to be something ahistorical and unrealistic in their implied expectation that historical actors can dramatically transcend the ideological and material forces of their own era. . . . Social work leaders, women and men alike – in family services, the settlement movement, and public administration – continued to act from the premise that women best served themselves, their families, society, and posterity by remaining at home to care for their children. It was not an unrealistic principle for an era in which access to effective contraception was denied to most women and, indeed, was illegal in most states, and when the alternative to home management, especially for immigrant and working-class women, was working under extraordinary conditions of exploitation, low wages, and arduous hours. For such women, work outside the home meant not personal autonomy but severe exploitation in deadening jobs. Economic security, if not liberation, lay in a good husband and provider who worked steadily at fair wages. These were views shared across a broad spectrum of American life . . . Social feminist [of the period] sought protective legislation for women and children, less from motives of maternalism than from a sound assessment of social problems and their probably alleviation or resolution. Advanced social feminists, moreover, actively sought the empowerment of those women who did work outside the home for whatever reasons” (Chambers, 20-21). The female campus leaders at the women’s colleges, the “unconventional women,” were those who entered public life and took up social causes; their career paths led to the settlement house, social work, and reform politics (Horowitz, 197-198).