Abstract

NEBRA, Julieta. Social Work’sfeminization: implications for today’s professional identity and profile construction in students and teachers from the University of Buenos Aires University. Trab. soc. [online]. 2018, n.31, pp.261-284. ISSN 1514-6871.

The aims of this article are both to describe the feminization processin the academic discipline of Social Work at University of Buenos Aires throughout its history, and to explore this process’ implications for today’s professional identity and profile construction.

To achieve this, quantitative data from census and electoral registers have been analyzed and have enable a comparative gender-perspective study of the student’s population since this training course’s origins until now. At the same time, considering that the process of feminization implies not only women majority, but also stereotyped assumptions and practices, gender distribution of teachers’ posts have been examined.

Bearing in mind that the construction of a profession and of a professional profile is achieved within the imaginary and the representations of the people who are part of the field, these quantitative data have been coordinated with a qualitative approximant from analysis of Social Work students and teachers’ discourse of their own interpretation of the profession’s profile. Semi-structured interviews and self-managed surveys to Social Work students and teachers have been carried out. Finally, this work shows a historic continuity in the professional feminization process with an increasing masculinization of the teachers’ hierarchy within the course itself.

Keywords : Social Work; feminization; history; imaginary.

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