Saturday, November 15, 2008

Are there too many women in Social Services?

I was musing about the death of baby P and all the people inolved and what struck me that was that it was all women. Even when they had a couple of former senior social workers on Radio 4 they were women. One could say that Social Services were hideously female if you wanted to be uncharitable.

But on a serious point, is this part of the problem? By there very nature we are told women are more collegiate and inclusive. Women tend to avoid confrontation and want to see the best in people. There is nothing wrong with this when in a mixed environment, indeed we are told women bring many benefits, but does it mean that in an environment like that surrounding baby P nobody was prepared to make the hard, confrontational, position? Did they all want to believe that their colleagues were right and acting in the P's best interest to the point that they missed what was really going on? Maybe one of them harboured doubts but didn't want to be seen breaking the consensus.

Perhaps a few men in the group, especially a couple of Alpha Males in the management chain, would have broken that consensus as they vied for or political leadership. They might have questioned the consensus as part of their own political positioning.

General stereoyping I know, but that doesn't make the point irrelevant.

I'l bet this question won't be raised in any of the of the inquiries or investigations though, but it would be if something as tragic happened in an all male environement.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would say that yes, that is part of the problem. Most abuse happens to women and children. It is their issue.

Old Holborn said...

Interesting concept

Mark Wadsworth said...

This applies to the whole public sector - 70% of them are women.

Simon Fawthrop said...

Looks like it wasn't all female:

"But with no new evidence to support a prosecution, services manager Clive Preece instructed that the boy should go back home. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7732193.stm


But I still reckon that if it had been 70% male then it would have still been raised in the reports.