Our profession of Social Work has a reputation for being unfriendly to men. In discussions with my parolees and probationers when I was a Parole & Probation agent in central Baltimore and with my detainees when I was a Correctional Officer at the Baltimore City jail, the feeling was strong that social workers in general don’t care much for men.
Outside the criminal justice system and far from Baltimore, the feeling is just as clear. One noted writer calls Social Work “perhaps the field that is most anti-male.” Another says social workers are the “feminist family police” who are prone to anti-male gender biases in family matters as strong and destructive as the racial biases underlying unfortunate behavior among police on the street.
From my own experience I cannot say these feelings are groundless. Far from it, in fact.
But just as there are good cops caught in a racist culture, there are good social workers, managers and educators who feel troubled and demoralized by a set of customs, beliefs, attitudes and practices that make it hard to be fair, balanced, respectful and helpful to men. I have worked with some of them. They are the hope and inspiration for today’s launch of Working Well With Men.
WWWM will do its best to provide them with tools and training so they can offer leadership on a different path forward.
The fundamental message is, “We can do better. We are wasting men’s talents. We are ignoring our ethical commitments to diversity and inclusiveness, we are forgetting our obligation to honor the dignity and worth of all persons. We need to see men not as the problem, but rather as an essential part of solutions that will take root, live, grow and work for the long term.”
It won’t be easy to speak up in that way. If you do it, you will likely face three powerful forces.
One is GroupThink, which makes it difficult to speak about alternatives to what “everybody knows.”
Another is In-Group Bias, which is 4.5 times stronger among women than among men*. We might think of this as The Sisterhood. If you are a female social worker who speaks up for men, you can expect to be deemed unsisterly; if you are a male social worker you run the risk of being called misogynist.
The third is the Women-Are-Wonderful Effect**. When a woman is in conflict or disagreement with a man, the Women-Are-Wonderful Effect makes it easy for social workers to believe the best about her and the worst about him.
Please look carefully at our website to see what we have to offer. And please let me know what else we might do to help you nudge Social Work in a better direction along gender lines. We want to do everything we can to help men give and get all the love they can.
References:
*Laurie A. Rudman and Stephanie A. Goodwin (2004). Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: Why do women like women more than men like men? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (4). 494–509.
**Alice H. Eagly and Antonio Mladinic (1994). Are people prejudiced against women? Some answers from research on attitudes, gender stereotypes, and judgments of competence. European Review of Social Psychology, 5 (1): 1-35. pp. 13, 21.
Outside the criminal justice system and far from Baltimore, the feeling is just as clear. One noted writer calls Social Work “perhaps the field that is most anti-male.” Another says social workers are the “feminist family police” who are prone to anti-male gender biases in family matters as strong and destructive as the racial biases underlying unfortunate behavior among police on the street.
From my own experience I cannot say these feelings are groundless. Far from it, in fact.
But just as there are good cops caught in a racist culture, there are good social workers, managers and educators who feel troubled and demoralized by a set of customs, beliefs, attitudes and practices that make it hard to be fair, balanced, respectful and helpful to men. I have worked with some of them. They are the hope and inspiration for today’s launch of Working Well With Men.
WWWM will do its best to provide them with tools and training so they can offer leadership on a different path forward.
The fundamental message is, “We can do better. We are wasting men’s talents. We are ignoring our ethical commitments to diversity and inclusiveness, we are forgetting our obligation to honor the dignity and worth of all persons. We need to see men not as the problem, but rather as an essential part of solutions that will take root, live, grow and work for the long term.”
It won’t be easy to speak up in that way. If you do it, you will likely face three powerful forces.
One is GroupThink, which makes it difficult to speak about alternatives to what “everybody knows.”
Another is In-Group Bias, which is 4.5 times stronger among women than among men*. We might think of this as The Sisterhood. If you are a female social worker who speaks up for men, you can expect to be deemed unsisterly; if you are a male social worker you run the risk of being called misogynist.
The third is the Women-Are-Wonderful Effect**. When a woman is in conflict or disagreement with a man, the Women-Are-Wonderful Effect makes it easy for social workers to believe the best about her and the worst about him.
Please look carefully at our website to see what we have to offer. And please let me know what else we might do to help you nudge Social Work in a better direction along gender lines. We want to do everything we can to help men give and get all the love they can.
References:
*Laurie A. Rudman and Stephanie A. Goodwin (2004). Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: Why do women like women more than men like men? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (4). 494–509.
**Alice H. Eagly and Antonio Mladinic (1994). Are people prejudiced against women? Some answers from research on attitudes, gender stereotypes, and judgments of competence. European Review of Social Psychology, 5 (1): 1-35. pp. 13, 21.
RSS Feed
