‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’: Reflections on gender from a study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland

McCulloch, Trish; Cree, Viviene E.e; Kirkwood, Steve; Mullins, Eve

Abstract

Community justice professionals operate within deeply gendered territory, yet there has been little attention to how gender is understood and embodied by the workforce. Building on findings from a mixed method study, this article explores professional perceptions of how gender plays out in criminal justice social work (CJSW) in Scotland. Our findings demonstrate that gender is an important but neglected dimension of CJSW. We conclude that advancing gender in this field requires a more inclusive theorising of gender in professional education and research, a more practical commitment to gender equality in policy and practice, and more routine opportunities for dialogue on issues of gender and justice within and across these domains.

Citation

McCulloch, T., Cree, V. E., Kirkwood, S., & Mullins, E. (2021). ‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’: Reflections on gender from a study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland. Probation Journal, 68(1), 8-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550520939153

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jul 17, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-03
• Deposit Date: Jul 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 27, 2020
• Journal: Probation Journal
• Print ISSN: 0264-5505
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-3079
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 68
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 8-27
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550520939153
• Keywords: gender, community justice, social work, probation, professional, criminal justice, practitioners
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2676475