Professionalizing Care—A Necessary Irony? Some Implications of the “Ethics of Care” for the Caring Professions and Informal Caring

Care, constraint, and collaboration : situating gender and power among multidisciplinary human service organizations.

“…Yet, the more bureaucratized human service organizations have become, the more these rationalized systems of bureaucraticallystructured service collide with mandates to care for families and children with crisis needs (Hood 2014;Hugman 2014). As conceptualized more fully in Chapter Three and explicated further in Chapter Five, the caring work of human services often collides with the bureaucratic dictates of what has become a highly rationalized system in ways that are, at their core, gendered, and often in complex and intersectional ways.…”

“…Also referred to as "social closure" the sensemaking process of creating categories that are open to one group but closed to another group results in disempowerment, oppression, exploitation, and opportunity hoarding (Weber 1968, p. 43). An example of social closure that is relevant for this study is the formalization of professional culture relative to the exclusion of recipient families (Hugman 2014). According to Sáez and Sánchez (2006) (Pfohl 1977).…”

“…Candace's story further demonstrates the amplified commitment of human service professionals in response to family violence and child victimization, particularly child sexual abuse, and the intensity of professional relationships that often emerge from the experience of sharing crisis care work (Cancian 2000;Cancian and Oliker 2000;Hugman 2014). …”

“…Previous scholars have emphasized the necessity for interagency collaboration within human services as a best practice approach for prevention, but also as a framework for enacting ethics of care (Gilligan 1993;Hugman 2014 Definitions and perceptions of collaboration are shaped by gender and gendered organizational processes; thus, the creation of more "communal" environments through which collaboration regularly occurs may be perceived as too feminine or too personal and in opposition to professional, objective, task-oriented work commitments (Coleman and Rippin 2000;Kanter 2008). Interagency collaboration, then, is framed by many human service workers as normal and essential, but concurrently challenging and inefficient.…”

“…According to Gilligan (1993) and others (Hugman 2014), ethics of care are rooted in gendered constructions, gender socialization, and gender identities, and are situated within hierarchal gendered relationships characterized by differential access to power.…”