It's feminist because I say so: feminism, social work and critical practice in the UK

This article explores the contribution of feminism to critical social work practice within the UK. It does so by examining a claim that social work students and practitioners have taken a simplistic stance to feminist theory: `it's feminist because I say so'. While this position might be a consequence of unease with theory within some approaches to feminism it is compounded by arrangements for social work education in the UK. It is argued that such a stance denies the complexities of feminist theory and fails to recognize some of the tensions within feminism. Identifying that in UK social work there are struggles to reconcile `standpointism' with postmodern feminism, the article uses the examples of feminist analyses of care and researching domestic violence to argue that critical practice is enriched by explorations of theoretical differences.