Social work and gender studies. Vindicating a specific scientific space

Abstract

This article analyzes, from a gender and feminist perspective, the scientific-academic status of Social Work within the hierarchy of university knowledge. We start with the consequences derived from the university reform that privileges a privatized and androcentric model and a commodification of knowledge that limits professionals who research on social, applied and gender issues, based on "other" methodologies and from "other" spaces. We focus on the Spanish context and the links of Social Work with gender and feminist studies; both transit in "common places" such as feminization of its members, the themes, the methodologies, and their ways of doing science. Nevertheless, the knowledge of Social Work is considered "second", both in Social Sciences as in the Gender and Feminist Studies. We conclude by vindicating the recognition of their scientific contributions and a space of its own for research in Social Work.