Thank a Social Worker

Cristen and Caroline trace the intersectional origins of social work, celebrate unsung African-American women social workers and why the job has grown notorious for overwork.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today's episode is one we
promised y'all a while back, and we are true to
our word. So this is our episode on social work

(00:25):
and social workers. And first of all, shout out to
the social workers listening. Yeah, y'all are a hard working,
passionate bunch of people who are underappreciated and underpaid across
the country. And you know what, Caroline, some of our
best friends with social workers. It's true. And uh to

(00:45):
two of my close friends or social workers, and they,
I don't think I've met two more passionate people about children. Honestly. Yeah,
I can say the exact same thing. One of my
best friends is a social worker working specifically with survivors
of domestic violence, and she's just like a superhero, a

(01:06):
living superhero. Yeah. They they deal with a lot. And
especially if any social workers out there themselves have um
histories with things like domestic abuse or or or molestation
or anything, um, the job is that much harder. It
can be very triggering if you decide to pursue that

(01:27):
line of work. Because of a desire to help others
from having to go through it themselves, and we received
a lot of yes, please do that requests after we
mentioned on our episode about women in welfare a while
back that we were considering talking about um social work
on an episode, So we wanted to share just a

(01:47):
little bit of the feedback that we were already hearing
from some of you out there listening who are also
in the field. Yeah listener Anna wrote in with several
points that she wanted to address things like safety in
the field, how she and her colleagues have been threatened
with physical violence or attacked by clients both children and

(02:09):
adults alike. She pointed out that men are generally in
upper management while women tend to be on the front lines,
which of course follows along with so many things we've
talked about on the podcast before, where men do tend
to be in the roles of power while women are
expected to be the nurturers. She said many jobs want
a master's degree, which is hard to pay back with

(02:31):
a low paying job, and in some areas where rent
is high, social workers even with master's degrees can't afford
rent and have to live in Section eight housing She
also talks about agencies being in the dark ages when
it comes to technology, in addition to a lot of
the same issues you see when you just talk about
nonprofits in general, which is things like high turnover rate, burnout,

(02:53):
and low compensation. And some fans on Facebook also requested
that we had as the issue of the negative stereotyping
of social workers and the perception that they are just
out there to take your kids away, right the baby
snatcher stereotype that a social worker, rather than being there

(03:13):
to help facilitate a safer family environment, is there to
simply remove children from the home. And I got to
say that the biggest challenge of researching for this episode
and and condensing this into a podcast is just how
much social work covers, I mean, across the lifespan, across

(03:38):
all sorts of issues and relationships. Social workers are there.
And in fact, social workers comprise the largest group of
mental health professionals in the United States, more than psychiatrists, psychologists,
and psychiatric nurses combined. I did not know that now
there are two hundred thousand than clinically trained social workers

(04:01):
in the United States alone, and the primary mission of
what they do, according to the National Association of Social
Workers code of ethics is quote to enhance human well
being and help meet the basic human needs of all people,
with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people
who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. And as

(04:23):
part of that, some of these specific issues that social
work tackles include poverty, discrimination, abuse, addiction, physical illness, divorce, housing,
domestic violence, unemployment, educational problems, disability, mental illness, and also
really focusing in on crisis prevention as well as individual

(04:48):
family and community counseling. And they work all over the place.
I mean especially in the U. S Department of Veterans Affairs,
but you can find social workers in schools and hospitals,
mental earth clinics and senior centers. UH, even in private practices,
not to mention prisons, the military companies, and in so

(05:08):
many wide and varied public and private agencies serving people
in need. And a lot of times when natural disasters
happen and the American Red Cross takes UH disaster relief
mental health specialists down there, a lot of them are
volunteer social workers. Because social workers are incredible and like

(05:31):
this is a total we hope this is a total
love letter to you about the hard work that you do,
because I do know that my social worker friends, by
virtue of working for the state, they cannot be very
political outwardly UM. And they certainly would not want to
be caught at a protest for one way or the
other politically for instance. UM. They are passionate about just

(05:54):
volunteering and being involved. And I texted my social work
bestie yesterday before we were coming into record this episode,
Caroline saying, like, Okay, what is something that you know
we should definitely emphasize um. And she responded that lots

(06:15):
of social workers think very macro but work on a
micro level because they really believe an individual client advocacy
and the importance of helping that one person. And she
also emphasized like their passion collective passion for social justice,
because social justice is really front and center and even

(06:35):
part of the n A s W Code of Ethics,
and a major appeal to people who are deciding whether
they would want to go into social work or counseling. UM.
Because while social workers and counselors might do similar things,

(06:56):
they are not the same thing as as you might
have imagine, since they have different names. Um. First of all,
they require different degrees, but also counseling is more specific
to the individual and the setting. Whereas social workers are
looking to improve quality of life, UM, the case work

(07:19):
is going to address not just the individuals, but also
environmental issues across all aspects of their life and cultures. UM.
That might include things like staying in touch with teachers
and employers. UM. So if you are someone who is
not familiar with social work, but you like things like

(07:41):
destigmatized mental health, health care access for seniors and the disabled,
workers compensation and legal protections against discrimination based on race, gender, faith,
sexual orientation, etcetera, well you have social workers to thank
for that. Well. Yeah, they've been on the front lines
literally in figuratively of these movements. For I mean, I

(08:04):
want to say our country's history, not that you would
call the people who did this type of work and
activism early in our country social workers, UM. But the
way that social work evolved, it evolved out of a
tradition of UH advocating for the whole person. And we
found a terrific condensed history of social work. UM. Because

(08:27):
if it were not a condensed history, we would still
be reading four weeks UM. But over at Michigan State
University's School of Social Work. They have terrific history that
starts out emphasizing how just these basic concepts of mutual
aid and charity that are foundational to American social work

(08:48):
have really intersectional roots, both in terms of religions and cultures.
It's not just Christian and European immigrants who contributed to
all of the US. You have values found in the
Koran and mutual aid practices um from all sorts of
both indigenous and uh industrialized cultures. Yeah, exactly, And I

(09:13):
mean this should sound familiar to you if you listen
to our last episode on nonprofits. There's a lot of overlap. Obviously,
when you look at the origins of our modern nonprofit
sector in our modern social work landscape, it comes a
lot out of not only those uh mutually beneficial cultural

(09:33):
practices in this country across all sorts of cultures, but
it really also comes out of a lot of efforts
in the progressive era to address issues that come along
with urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Yeah, massive issues with poverty,
child welfare, and mental health. From the get go, we're

(09:54):
talking pre American Revolution even UM and before are social
workers existed. Uh. These volunteers who would engage in this
kind of charitable work were called friendly visitors, which, yeah,
it sounds so creepy, right, it sounds really creepy. It

(10:15):
also kind of sounds like your period, but not always
the friendly visitor. Uh. Yeah, the friendly visitors sounds like
a horror movie like the Baba Duke. Yes, yes, um,
but these friendly visitors were indeed friendly. Um. They were
usually white and wealthier private individuals who had like terrific intentions. Um.

(10:43):
But they thought that they could sort of morally influence
the poor out of poverty through organizations like the Association
for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor and
the Children's Aid Society. Um. But on the upshot, these
people were coming face to face with the substandard living conditions.

(11:04):
This was raising the alarm bells about the need to
address things like poverty and child labor. Yeah. And I
mean keep in mind too, the Civil War, which had
obviously a massive impact on the way that our country
is shaped and the way that we treat each other. Um,

(11:25):
it's spurred massive private social welfare initiatives like the Red Cross.
So we talked in our nonprofit episode, Kristen mentioned in
that in that episode about how you know, you see
a wave of philanthropy as people are donating money to
communities that have been devastated. You see people coming together
to make bandages and clothes for soldiers and the poor.

(11:48):
And it's really no different when it comes to the
how the Civil War relates to the history of social work.
And did you know, Caroline, because I didn't before reading
for this podcast, that the Bureau of Refugees Freedman an
Abandoned Land simply known as the Freedman's Bureau, was the
first federal social welfare program. UM. It was established to

(12:11):
assist emancipated slaves during reconstruction and basically be like, okay, um,
enslaved people, you all are free white people in the South,
y'all are still really racist, probably, so we're going to
make sure that everybody gets along and that y'all don't
just enslave them again. Um. But it was only in

(12:37):
existence officially from eighteen sixty five to eighteen seventy two,
and really it was only in its first year that
it had as much like the most like steam and
support um and military backing, and then it kind of
petered out, but not before establishing Howard University and the

(13:00):
Hampton Institute. I didn't that's the part that I didn't know. Yeah,
you know about the Freedmance Bureau. I didn't know about
the Freeman Bureau. We go on, and we're gonna come
full circle with Hampton very soon, all right now. Not surprisingly,
because this is spenty, women were extremely influential in establishing

(13:21):
things like settlement houses, which focused on environmental rather than
individual sources of poverty. So rather than saying it's your fault,
you are failing in some way and therefore you are
on poverty, it addressed the ways that people were living
and tried to introduce better hygiene, a better sense of community. Uh.

(13:46):
There was one settlement house that even had a gymnasium
and places to do laundry. Yeah, I mean, um, rather
than say friendly visitors who would maybe come over and
then go back, it sounds like they're going to tickle you. Honestly,
I'm going to be on friendly visitors. It sounds like
they're wearing nickey mouse gloves and they're gonna take anyway

(14:07):
like pajama grams. Um. Yeah, they didn't do all that much.
It doesn't seem like from from our reading to really
address the issues of living in more squalid conditions, you know,
whereas settlement houses were intentionally established in poorer neighborhoods to

(14:30):
show people how they could live and improve their living conditions,
and also to work to connect them to employment opportunities,
with a particular focus on women and children. And so
in eighteen eighty six, New York's Neighborhood Guild was the
first such settlement house. And then in eighteen eighty nine

(14:51):
we get a name that should probably be at least
vaguely familiar to semanty listeners. Jane Adams and Ellen Gates
star found to Chicago's Hull House. And by the way,
Adams was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace
Prize in ninety one to Shabby Jane, not to shabby indeed,
and we talked about Jane in our episode on Boston Marriages,

(15:16):
which you can go back and listen to if you
haven't already, and Stephie missed in history class has devoted
podcast episodes to Jane Adams and the Hull House. And
while we could also spend the next I don't know
five hours talking about Jane Adams because she did such
incredible work and was so well respected and is really

(15:39):
the godmother of social work in a lot of ways. Instead,
because information about her is so accessible, we want to
highlight some of her unsung black contemporaries who were doing
equally important work. Um. So, first off, let's just note

(16:00):
that in the first formal social work training program was
established in what would become Columbia Universities School of Social Work,
and by nineteen nineteen there were seventeen schools of social
work in the United States. So things are really picking up,
and women are really at the forefront of this developing field.

(16:21):
But if you look at histories of social work, most
of the time you see white women who absolutely we're
at the forefront of that field and who were absolutely
doing incredible work. But you know what, we want to
give some credit where credit is do because also, y'all,

(16:41):
a lot of progressive era settlements at this time were
exclusively staffed by and served white people. But of course
black communities needed social reform. Yeah, focusing just on the
white women and just on the Jane adamszz is, while
that tells a significant poor and of the story, is
definitely not the full story. So you have amazing women

(17:03):
like Janie Porter Barrett, who Kristen graduated from the Hampton
Institute callback and she founded the Locust Streets Settlement House
in eighteen ninety in Hampton, Virginia, which was the first
United States settlement house for African Americans. And she founded
it to help girls and women to become good homemakers

(17:25):
and to improve the social life of the community. Yeah.
Barrett started out just inviting local kids into her home
and almost like a daycare of sorts, um, and then
it developed into the Settlement House. And then in nineteen
fifteen she founded the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls,

(17:47):
specifically to serve previously incarcerated girls. And double call back
to our episode on women in nonprofits. They received huge
philanthrope help from the Russell Sage Foundation, which was started
al a woman, not a man named Russell. Yeah, Russell
was the woman's husband, although it was Russell's money, Russell's billions. Yeah,

(18:11):
you gotta love billions, um. And then we have to
introduce you to Sarah Fernandez. She is another Hampton grad
and another contemporary of Jane Adams, who ended up in
Baltimore's poor Black blood Field neighborhood to establish settlement houses
there and also in Rhode Island for black residents. She

(18:32):
helped revitalize blighted black neighborhoods with a public library, infant
daycare center, kindergarten, and even some home x style classes
for girls. And she championed in general just better living,
working in social conditions for black people, especially black women.
And this whole education thing, in this daycare thing is

(18:52):
really something you see come up again and again in
the progressive era. It's sort of the idea behind like
headstart about we need to say at our children off
however young on the right foot. You see so many
club women of this era, black or white, helping to
establish daycares to not only help working mothers, the working

(19:13):
poor who had to like go to work in someone
else's home, probably cleaning, um, but to also help those
children grow up to maybe have a better life. Yeah.
And Fernandez really was one of the leading social workers
of her time. I mean, she was renowned, really um

(19:34):
and she loved her social work so much by the
way that she was also a poet and is considered
part of the Harlem Renaissance. Um. And in one of
her poems, Denial, she writes, yet oftentimes, as I make
the daily round of crowded city by ways, I've found
shining up from the mark and slum of things, something

(19:55):
so beautiful. My spirit sings, And that to me is
the heart of a social worker. Yeah, I think. Yeah,
that sums it up really well. And two other examples
of incredible women giving back to their communities are Eartha
White in Jacksonville, Florida and Victorian Matthews in New York
who started the White Rose Industrial Association for Young Black

(20:17):
Working Women and helped found the National Association of Colored Women.
And this is coming from a book by Barbara Lovey
simon the empowerment tradition in American social work history. And uh,
we just wanted to mention them because White, for instance,
is another woman who looked around at her Black community

(20:39):
and said, well, there are no white leads settlements here,
so I'll start one. UM. And also too, there were
this was common among h certain immigrant groups and Jewish
communities and the Black community where they did prefer and
and trusted more UM charity of this sort that came

(21:02):
from within their own community UM, which also makes sense.
So there was even a deeper value to that UM.
And people like Sara Fernandez were also instrumental in mobilizing
black women, uh in the suffrage movement as well. So
there is a lot going on. Yeah, yeah, definitely at
the turn of the century, there's a lot going on

(21:23):
in terms of social work, early social work. There were
four hundred settlement houses across the US by nineteen ten.
And don't think there weren't ripple effects. The effects that
these women and their work had were not limited to
just what was going on within the walls of the
settlement homes. They affected the juvenile court system, uh, the
widows pension programs, child labor laws, public health reform, not

(21:47):
to mention organizations like the Women's Trade Union League, the
Urban League, and the inn double a CP. And to
just show you how uh, these earlier women in the
early history of social work are making so much influence
now that we're getting into even government in hull houses.

(22:10):
Julia Lathrop establishes the Federal Children's Bureau. So social work
is becoming its own, for real, official thing, validated and
recognized even by the US government. And we're going to
talk about a pivotal moment in the professionalization and standardization

(22:32):
of social work when we come right back from a
quick break. One thing that I was really happy to
note in our research was that it was a woman

(22:54):
person at the forefront of calling for more standardization within
the field. Normally his Historically, when you and I talk
about things like this, Kristan, it is a man coming
into an established, more feminized field and calling for more
standardization and professionalization so that he can make more money
helming it whatever it is. But we have a Mary

(23:17):
Ellen Richmond who was one of the first to call
for such standardization, and she actually delivered a speech at
the National Conference of Charities and Correction calling for not
only more standardization there I said it again, but also
more training for social workers. Yeah, and she knew what
she was talking about. Her book, Social Diagnosis was one

(23:39):
of the first social work books to incorporate scientific principles
from law, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and history. So excellent idea
way to go. But what does it take to get
the ball rolling, to get people to really pay attention
A dude saying it? So I spoke to soon, Well, no,

(24:02):
I mean, Mary Ellen Richmond is still a badass. You
will never not be a badass. You will never not
be the first but it was Dr Abraham Flexner, totally
fake name who who really convinced the field that it
needed to ratchet up its standards, needed to flex its standards.

(24:27):
Uh yeah. In nineteen fifteen he gave a speech called
is social worker Profession? And it basically dismissed social workers
lack of specificity, technical skills or specialized knowledge. So never
mind the incredible life changing work that all of these
people had been doing up to this point. Um, he's

(24:47):
just going to dismiss a lot of those methods. And
so by the nineteen twenties, thanks to Flexner's advocacy, but also,
of course Mary Ellen Richmond's work, uh, casework emerged as
the dominant form of professional social work in the US.
And listen, Flexner delivered that speech at the same conference

(25:09):
that Richmond had in So maybe it was a dude.
Maybe it was also the seventeen years in between. I
don't know, But so social workers listening, if case work
is the band of your existence, then just blame Dr
Abraham Flexner. But in terms of the rising status of

(25:31):
social work, it was really the Great Depression and two
World Wars that rapidly expanded its scope and influence because
in terms of the Great Depression. When everybody's poor, we're like, oh,
maybe maybe poor people aren't deserving or undeserving or morally

(25:51):
and intellectually broken people. Maybe we could use some social services.
And this is when we are introduced to the concept
and now highly politicized concept of entitlements. And we don't
want to rehash a lot of this detail that we
went into in our episode, uh, Welfare Queens, but we

(26:15):
do want to shout out Francis Perkins, who was a
social worker and also appointed to f DRS Cabinet. She
was the first female cabinet member, and she was the
Treasury Secretary and responsible really for the nineteen thirty five
Social Security Act, someone who we could absolutely easily devote

(26:39):
a whole podcast too. But you'll learn a little bit
more about her and this whole welfare process um and
how it really started for white people if you go
back and listen to the episode titled Welfare Queens, in
which we bust up that racist stereotype and sort of
like we did with Jane Adams, instead of spending all

(26:59):
our time on Perkins, we want to talk about someone
you probably definitely haven't heard of. Yeah, that's thyra J. Edwards,
and reading her biography and her accomplishments, it's overwhelming. I
mean the woman was, she was brilliant, she was undaunted,
she was driven um and yet still in nineteen forty

(27:20):
four she was called just one of the most outstanding
Negro women in the world, rather than just what she was,
which is one of the most outstanding women in the world.
But overshadowing some of her incredible legacy and her incredible
work is the fact that when she was working, the
political climate was such that anyone who was in any

(27:44):
way connected to communism, socialism, the Communist Party was immediately suspect,
and Edwards was. She was a supporter of the Communist
Party in the United States, and she did travel abroad
odd but well before that, before she becomes a globe

(28:05):
trotter and famous international journalist as well as a social worker,
she travels to Gary, Indiana, where she lives in the
nineteen twenties, and it's there, as her biography describes, she
builds a national reputation as a social worker, club woman, speaker,
and interracial activist. UM and child welfare was really her

(28:29):
core passion, and she also, though was not interested in
only addressing the issues of black communities and maintaining segregation.
She wanted to see interracial change. And Yo, this is
happening in the nineteen twenties. So a woman definitely ahead

(28:53):
of her time. Because Um, even through postwar American social
work theory, the idea was that black social workers should
only work with black communities and vice versa, whereas Edwards
took a very intersectional approach to her work and insisted
that that was, you know, the best way to do it. UM.

(29:15):
She eventually became the executive director of the Congress of
American Women. During World War Two, she traveled abroad and
became a world famous journalist. She established the first organization
to help children Holocaust survivors in Rome. UM. This woman
did so much, and regardless of the community that she

(29:37):
was helping, obviously like her devotion was two civil rights
for her fellow black community. UM. She was buds, for instance,
with labor leader A Philip Randolph, who was also one
of the Big Six of the Civil rights movement. UM.
And considering all of that, when I found her through

(29:59):
the this research, I was so stunned that I had
never heard of her. Yeah, well, especially after all of
these years of doing sminty Like, yeah, so it's it's
no surprise that your average human person out there might
not have heard of her. And if you want to
learn more about her, which I do, uh, Greg Andrews
wrote a well reviewed biography of her, Theory J. Edwards

(30:23):
Black Activists in the Global Freedom Struggle, and I'm just
I'm just still blown away that aside from his book
and reviews of his book online and um an entry
of about her over at black past dot org and
here and there, you really got a dig to find her. Well, yeah,
which is true. I mean, despite her fame and despite

(30:48):
all the things she accomplished in her day, Like that's
just so true of so many of these amazing women,
especially Black women of that era. But meanwhile, while this
is going on, professionalization of the field is continuing. In
nineteen fifty two you get the formation of the Council
on Social Work Education, and in nineteen fifty five the

(31:09):
establishment of the National Association of Social Workers. And there
was another amazing woman around this time who was keeping
a very busy This is a woman who, again, like
all of these women, so incredible and we could also
fill an entire episode about Dorothy Height, who was trained
as a social worker and who started her career as

(31:31):
a New York Welfare Office case worker in the nineteen forties.
She also oversaw the y w C as desegregation across
all of its facilities, then took the helm of the
National Council of Negro Women from nineteen fifty seven to
nineties seven, UH, tackling programs around voting rights, poverty, and AIDS.

(31:52):
This woman did not stop. No, I mean and and
that's just one of the many things she was doing
during that window. For instance, in nineteen seventy one, she
helped found the National Women's Political Caucus. UM. Obama calls
her the godmother of the civil rights movement and a
hero to so many Americans. UM. At his inauguration, she

(32:14):
was seated right up there UM with the first family
and President Bill Clinton also awarded her the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. And this laundry list of accomplishments and commitments
that Height had goes to show really the scope of
social work, something that might seem like like a minimal

(32:38):
kind of job, but it actually is very much linked
with our history and culture of civil rights and activism
and politics. Because again at the heart of social work
is social justice, and Dorothy height U is an embodiment
of that. Yeah, and her her obituary area in the

(33:00):
New York Times actually reminded me of our episode that
we did on Paully Murray because they credit her in
the obituary with treating the problems of equality for women
and equality for African Americans as a steamless whole, merging
concerns that had been largely historically separate. Um. Just further

(33:21):
driving home that there have always been so many incredible
and inspirational Black women who have recognized the importance of
addressing both parts of their identity or or these two
parts of their identity and how they interact with each other.
And jumping back to what was happening in the social
work field, um, once we get into the civil rights era,

(33:46):
by this point, from around the nineteen forties to the
nineteen sixties, it was really middle class white people who
were overwhelmingly benefiting from newly established public welfare agencies like
the Department and of Health, Education and Welfare. Which again, uh,
if you want to learn more about this, go back
and listen to our episode on welfare queens. And that

(34:09):
leads us though to the nineteen sixties and lb j's
War on Poverty, which really starts this back and forth
of government funded public assistance and social welfare programs where
you have someone like Reagan coming and being like, oh, no,
government is way too big, we gotta rein it in.

(34:30):
And the eighties were not very fun for social workers
because those federal cuts under Reagan dovetailed with things like
the crack epidemic um. And then once we get into
the Clinton administration, he inherits a massive deficit and a
very polarized Congress who has little interest in helping him,

(34:55):
and he's somewhat signed into signing the controversial Welfare Reform Act,
of which some would say did irrevocable damage to at
least federally funded um social assistance and so called entitlements.
So I think that's part of why social work gets

(35:16):
a bad rap, because it's been politicized, it's been politicized
and has gotten bogged down in a lot of government
bureaucracy um. And if we look at the bird's eye
landscape of social work today, y'all, it's hard out there
for a social work agency, but plenty of jobs to
be had. Hello, if you if you're thinking about college

(35:39):
or a new field or a new job, consider social
work because America needs you. Yeah. I mean, as our
parents and grandparents are aging, there is going to be
that growing demand and healthcare and social assistance. UM. But
are growing pains in the meantime for social workers are

(35:59):
going to involve growing case leads and social workers, just
like workers in nonprofits, are seeing higher turnover and are
struggling with things like reaching people in more distant rural areas.
And because they're simply not enough bodies um to fill
all of the jobs needed. Uh, you're seeing more outsourcing,

(36:21):
which then also spirals back to larger caseloads on the
existing social workers. And it's the same kind of spiral
that we talked about UM with nonprofits. UM. So there
there is a desperate need there that the supply and
demand is completely imbalanced. UM. But if we look at

(36:42):
who is meeting the demand, eighty four percent are women.
Are women and women making not a ton of money.
The median pay median is ndred, the average is about thousand. Yeah.
My social worker friends would laugh bitterly at that fort number. UM.

(37:08):
And as wold, a lot of guys frankly and I'm
not trying to be a jerk about it, but dudes,
according to the numbers, just don't want to be social workers.
Um in Jack Fishel at Mike suggested that it's kind
of a mix of things really that you can attribute
this to. You have the low pay and a reputation

(37:31):
for feminine gendering that result in just ten percent of
current male social social workers even considering the profession before college. Um,
it's just considered something that women do. It's nurturing, you're
taking care of people. You're going into homes and holding
babies or snatching them according to other stereotypes and uh.

(37:52):
That stat was coming from a survey conducted by the
National Association of Social Workers that also found that current
male so SHI workers were likeliest to be inspired to
become one by exposure to another social worker. Hey, does
this sound like a familiar refrain of seeing it? To be?
It that we talk about all the time in terms

(38:14):
of women in STEM there's not enough visibility, There aren't
role models. Girls don't know they can be these things
because we never see women in these roles. It's the
same thing for social work. And you might say, like,
why would I want to be a social work because
isn't it just like you said, overwork under pay in
government bureaucracy. Well, not necessarily if you need a job,

(38:36):
you're kind of shooting yourselves in the foot because it
is an extremely fast growing sector and if you want
to help other men out, uh, kind of pay it forward.
The disproportionate number of clinical female social workers and mental
health services might determ men from seeking services. So again,

(38:56):
you might also be role modeling for men who not
necessarily want to become social workers, but who could use
some attention from a social worker and male social workers.
You guys can enjoy a wage gap, Yeah, take advantage
of the wage gap. Guys, come on down. What's not
to love? Yeah, So, according to two thousand and six study,

(39:23):
the difference in average salaries for men and women working
full time in a single social work job was just
over twelve thousand dollars And so when you control for
other factors like age, race, geography, uh degree, urban or
rural setting, blah blah blah um, that salary gap does
drop to about just over seven thousand dollars um. So

(39:46):
that means that overall, the percentage wage gap between male
and female social workers is about four, which ps is
higher than the national average. Um, and guys, if you
aren't convinced yet, there are many studies do confirm a
disproportionate number of men in social work management. You guys

(40:10):
are putting the man in social work management. This was
something that my social work bestie UM brought up in
her text to me, and she was like, I don't
know if this is just anecdotal or what, but I
see a lot of incredibly talented women getting passed over
by not as qualified men for a number of reasons.

(40:33):
But it is an issue. And Um, dear friend, if
you're listening, it is not all in your head. Um.
And that was something to write that our stuff I've
never told you listeners had pointed out right exactly, it
is not in your head. And I've heard my social
work friends talk about this and their theories involved things like, um,
because men are so underrepresented, you want to show that

(40:55):
a man is involved, that a man can be in charge,
and that maybe a man and you know, is better
able to somehow handle the bureaucracy and the paperwork and
the dirty work. And it's like, there's nothing wrong with
men being social work managers. It's just such an obviously
imbalanced pipeline. UM, and I do wonder though, like how

(41:18):
much of that is. Of course you've got gender norms
and expectations, but how much are all of these individual
people's backgrounds playing into this. I would be more interested
to learn too, And social workers, I want to hear
from you about specific circumstances that lead certain people to
want to be on those front lines, to want to

(41:40):
be UM directly dealing with families and mental health and education, um,
things like that versus being in the office. You know.
I I would be interested to hear too, like what
it is about you in your lives that made you
choose one over the other. So with that, let us
know social workers listening. I'm sure you have lots of

(42:03):
thoughts and hopefully you enjoyed UM hearing about some of
your four mothers. Um. I just I just think it's
pretty fascinating that this is a profession that women really
developed and yet today men run huh not like we
ever see that. That was the sound of our librarianship episode,

(42:26):
in our nonprofit episode, and our our teacher episode. UM.
So mom stuff at house folks dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us Moms of podcast
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you when we come right back
from a quick break. I have one here from Jane.

(42:50):
In response to our Mothers of Invention episode, Jane says,
love the podcast. You keep me connected to my younger
feminist self. I'm sixty five, while putting me in touch
with how the younger generation thinks about things. As I
was listening to Mother's of Invention, I saw the o
bit for Valerie Hunter Gordon, a British army wife, and
thought she deserved a shout out. By the time she

(43:12):
had her third child in ninety seven, at twenty six,
she figured there had to be a better way to
deal with diapers. She crafted a washable outer garment from
nylon parachute material and inserted a throwaway liner of cellulose
wrapped in cotton wool, later switching to plastic, dubbed the
Patty p a d d I. It wasn't the first

(43:35):
disposable diaper, but it helped sell more people on a
product that at first struck many as extravagant. Keep up
the good work, and Jane, thank you so much for
listening and alerting us to Valerie Hunter Gordon. I have
a letter here from Marty, who writes, you cannot imagine
how happy I was to find your amazing podcast last year.

(43:56):
My favorite thing it was recommended to me by my
thirty year old daughter. That's right, see and see. I
am that mom who may have not told you, but
really the cool thing is you're telling me. I've learned
amazing things by listening to your podcast and of some
of the best discussions with my three grown daughters. Sminy
has validated some of my opinions and has me questioning

(44:19):
many things I never thought to question. I do not
feel alienated from your show because of my age. Ever,
as a mom, I can tell you that I am
proud of you as I am proud of my own
daughters for throwing a little light. Oh Marty, thank you
all that means so much, and thanks to your daughters
for introducing you to stuff mom never told you and listeners.

(44:42):
If you have stuff to share with us, mom stuff
at how stuff works dot Com is where you can
do it and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources So you can learn even more
about social work. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
told You dot com. For more on this and thousands

(45:03):
of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.