‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’: Reflections on gender from a study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland

Abstract

Community justice professionals operate within deeply gendered territory, yet there has been little attention to how gender is understood and embodied by the workforce. Building on findings from a mixed method study, this article explores professional perceptions of how gender plays out in criminal justice social work (CJSW) in Scotland. Our findings demonstrate that gender is an important but neglected dimension of CJSW. We conclude that advancing gender in this field requires a more inclusive theorising of gender in professional education and research, a more practical commitment to gender equality in policy and practice, and more routine opportunities for dialogue on issues of gender and justice within and across these domains.

Probation officers working with women offenders in the community: Evidence from Catalonia

“…As can be seen in Tables 1 and 2 above, and as in other countries (Dominey, 2015;McCulloch et al, 2020), there is a clear feminisation of the Catalan Probation System. More than half of the probation officers in both provinces are women.…”

“…On the other hand, the vast majority of professionals are Spanish. These predominant characteristics may have subtle consequences for the relationships between professionals and users established during community sentence implementation (Dominey, 2015; McCulloch et al, 2020). Broadly speaking, in the case of Catalonia, 92% of the user population is male and 8% of the user population is female; approximately 30% of the population is immigrant and more than half of the population is over 36 years of age.…”

“…Gender 60% women 40% men 50% women 50% men Nationality 95% Spanish 5% other 100% Spanish serving community sentences in Catalonia and specifically on women offenders, see Vasilescu (2020Vasilescu ( , 2021Vasilescu and López-Riba, 2021). Given recent evidence, which identifies a clear relationship between pro-social modelling and desistance, it should be a priority to balance the characteristics of professionals in such a way that they are more representative of the service users (Howard League for Penal Reform, 1999;McCulloch et al, 2020). For example, international literature highlights as a specific good practise for women the possibility of being supervised by a probation officer of the same gender (Barnett, 2012;Clarke, 2004;Women's Breakout, 2016).…”

Ideological Dilemmas in Social Work: Justice Social Workers in Scotland Talk about Gender in Practice

“…This study, conducted as part of the Scottish Government's celebration of the Social Work (Scotland) Act of 1968, represents our attempt to find out how the current generation of JSWs in Scotland feel about gender and their work; how do they manage the tightrope they have to walk within the context of policy and practice that is inevitably gendered? (see also Cree et al, 2018;McCulloch et al, 2020). We will begin by setting the context of our study, starting with the historical picture and moving on to a discussion of ideas, policies and practices that characterise justice social work in Scotland today.…”