Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

As a recently qualified community development worker in Scotland, I find myself increasingly frustrated and disillusioned by the growing emphasis on individualized problem-solving and the lack of political action that seems to embody the dominant forms of ‘community development’ practice in the voluntary and community sector. There appears to be an invisible wedge that divides a grassroots micro-level focus on the ‘daily grind’ of service delivery from a macro-level political education and activism focus on challenging structural inequalities. Community workers are now, more often than not, bound by short-term projects, ‘outcomes-focused’ work and satisfying funding criteria. Longer term, structured and systemic political education and skills no longer appear to fit with community development, as it now seems to be framed. As a practitioner, this pressures me into feeling that I have to make a choice between the political and the personal: lobbying and responding to government consultations for people or...