Patriarchy and Social Welfare Work

In this study, I use the case of social welfare work to build upon Hartmann's (1976) analysis of sex-based occupational segregation and Braverman's (1974) analysis of the transformation of the labor process under monopoly capitalism in order to demonstrate how patriarchy operates within the work place. Specifically, I show how deskilling in this female-intensive occupation furthered the subordination of women in the social welfare labor process and how the action of women themselves operates to reproduce patriarchal relations on the job. In the concluding section, I draw implications from my study of patriarchy within social welfare work for building towards a more complete understanding of how work-place inequalities are produced and reproduced, regardless of the specific features of the occupation or its workforce.