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•Summary: Postmodern discourse in contemporary social work literature has captured a growing audience and is raising a serious challenge for social work theory and practice. While attention is being focused on this new post-activist work the role and function of the welfare state in many western democratic countries is being devalued. At the same time state-based services and resources are being cut, with social workers becoming prime targets for rationalization. Addressing and responding to this postmodern 'turn'is one of the major challenges that confront social work today: a concern that needs urgent attention if social work is to remain a viable player in the 'post welfare'debate.•Findings: Social work needs to wake up from the enticing, almost mesmerizing effect of postmodern discourse and take another look at the way economic, gender and colonial issues continue to lie at the root of injustice and impoverishment. Focusing on the local and the contextuality of the specific takes attention away from the pervasive power of structural forces. Rather than call for the negation of grand theories, social work needs to realign itself with a more, rather than less, national and global focus.•Applications: Postmodern social work argues for the jettisoning of 'grand'or 'universal'social change theories on which social work was founded, in favour of the re-appreciation of the local and the everyday contexts of practice as sites for action and resistance. Underlying this development is a neo-conservative ideology that creates great discrepancies between rich and poor and undermines traditional social work theory and practice. Ultimately social work must refocus its attention on exposing global economic inequalities and oppressive gender and ethnicity-based relations across the globe. Social work will survive in its mission if it takes on this challenge in addition to the micro-deconstruction offered by the postmodern discourse. Finding a way forward means combining the personal with the political so that both are integrated into a more relevant social work discourse.

• Summary: This article reports on a research project with final year social work students on placement from a University in Sydney which, as part of developing a more critically reflective pedagogy, asked students to write narratives about placement experiences. The richness of these narratives makes them useful for developing a critically reflective process for application in practice teaching, in both Australia and the UK, where critical reflection is increasingly being incorporated in the field placement curriculum.• Findings: The use of narratives is found to represent a way of knowing and thinking that is particularly suited to identifying the issues which students on placement have to confront.• Applications: Used in the context of a critically reflective framework, student-centred narratives provide practice-based teachers with an opportunity to develop critically reflective processes as part of curriculum scholarship; overcoming, rather than reinforcing, the potential division between theory and practice strands.

• Summary: This article identifies important challenges facing social work supervision as a result of the social, political and economic changes that have characterized the last two decades in most Western countries. In response a re-positioning of the critical tradition in the scholarship and practice of social work has been proffered by several authors (for example, Allan et al., 2003; Dominelli, 2002) as a means of addressing and counteracting the more negative challenges facing social work emanating from these changes. We argue that this critical re-positioning can also be applied to similar challenges facing practice supervision.• Findings: As the social work landscape has to contend with a more conservative and fiscally restrictive environment, so too has practice supervision become more focused on efficiency, accountability and worker performance often at the expense of professional and practice development. In addition, current research has identified a crisis in the probity of practice supervision where many practitioners cite disillusionment and despair, as well as lack of opportunity to stop and critically reflect on practice situations as another challenge in this changed climate.• Application: As a significant site of practice, a critically informed supervision praxis has the potential to emerge as a site for modelling social change strategies associated with the critical social work tradition.

PurposeThis discussion asks why women leaders are, at the beginning of the twenty‐first century, as scarce in the corporate boardrooms and university corridors as they were 30 years ago. After nearly three decades of legislative and organisational support for more gender equity and inclusive management practices, the illusive glass ceiling still remains an issue for management policy debate.Design/methodology/approachIn this discussion the culture of work in the new economy is discussed.FindingsIt seems that the feminist approach calling for equity in public life has lost its currency as new management restructures and workplace changes are again "gender inflicted".Originality/valueIn the final analysis more research is required where successful women leaders are positioned centre stage so that they stay in the mainstream of paid work and public life, not in the margins.

This article focuses on the impact of the Australian Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity) legislation (1986), on women's employment in the higher education sector. This Act aimed to address the disadvantage faced by women in the workplace. In the academy, this meant that some of the difficulties encountered by women who aspired to careers and senior positions were to be documented and addressed. Fourteen years after its implementation, while there has been a general growth in women's employment in the sector, there still exists a glass ceiling preventing women in both academic and administrative positions moving into management structures. This article examines some of the issues that have emerged in attempting to create a "level playing field" for women in the academy with regard to supporting promotional opportunities and encouraging a positive and supportive workplace. Strategies for overcoming existing barriers and the importance of future research are emphasised.

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the way the Australian press constructed the issues related to conceptive technologies (IVF and IVF‐surrogacy particularly) during the period when the technologies were most visibly controversial. It asks how medical technology, the profession, ethical debates and research were presented, focussing on the representation of women's bodies, 'motherhood', and consumerist conceptions of medical solutions to infertility.Moral, ethical and political issues, including feminist critiques of conceptive technologies and medical power were found to be presented in limited and partial ways ‐ by the 'medical‐miracle' (human interest) or the 'experts‐debate‐legal‐issues' genres of press report. In text and in photographs, the press showed mothers and babies as the (positive) products of technology. Women were shown reacting, in emotional terms, to the productive power of technology. Men were active, protective, expert, and the source of rational, abstract talk. The press relied heavily on proponents of the technologies for their news stories. The results are discussed in terms of Foucault's general analysis of the history of discourses of sexuality and feminist critiques of conceptive technologies.

"The COVID-19 pandemic represents a critical juncture in the development of the welfare state affirming its importance for its citizens' economic, health and wellbeing, and safety especially for its most vulnerable populations. It demonstrated that the crisis preparedness that is crucial for an effective protection of its citizens, the ultimate purpose of the welfare state, unquestionably exceeds the narrow horizon of a corporatized welfare industry with its singular focus on the maximisation of profit for the elites and cost containment for the government. Social workers need to engage with the contradictions and tensions that spring from an underfunded welfare services and engage in the political struggle over a well-resourced welfare state. Contributors to this book take on this challenge. By tracing the various contradictions of the pandemic, the contributors reflect on new ways of thinking about welfare by exploring what to keep, what to challenge and what to change. By highlighting important challenges for a social justice-focused response as well as exploring the many challenges exposed by the pandemic facing social work for the coming decades, contributors critically outline pathways in social work that might contribute to the shaping of a less cruel and more capable welfare state. Using case-studies from Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, Italy, Slovenia, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, China, and the US, the book features 19 chapters by leading experts. This book will be of interest to all social work scholars, students, and practitioners as well as those working in social policy and health more broadly"--

Right-wing nationalist populism and social work : some definitions and features / Carolyn Noble and Goetz Ottmann -- Social work, modernity and right-wing nationalist populism / Jim Ife -- White fragility, populism, xenophobia and late neoliberalism / Donna Baines and Virginia Mapedzahama -- A radical tradition of community development responses to right-wing populism / Peter Westoby -- The rise of angry white men : resisting populist masculinity and the backlash against gender equality / Bob Pease -- Right-wing populism and a feminist social work response / Carolyn Noble -- The multifaceted challenges of new right-wing populism to social work : the profession's swansong or the rebirth of activism? / Luca Fazzi and Urban Nothdurfter -- A roar of defiance against the elites : Brexit, populism and social work / Iain Ferguson -- Integration in the age of populism : highlighting key terms in the context of refugee resettlement in the United States / Caren J. Frost, Kwynn M. Gonzalez-Pons and Lisa H. Gren -- Citizenship, populism and social work in the Finnish welfare state / Kati Turtiainen and Tuomo Kokkonen -- Surveillance, sanctions, and behaviour modification in the name of far-right nationalism : the rise of authoritarian welfare in Australia / Goetz Ottmann -- Is welfare chauvinism evident in Australia? Examining right-wing populist views towards Muslim refugees and Indigenous Australians / Tegan Edwards, Philip Mendes and Catherine Flynn -- Resisting the rise of right-wing populism : European social work examples / Janet Anand, Stefan Borrmann and Chaitali Das -- Social workers partnering with populism / Susie Latham and Linda Briskman -- They live like animals : migrants, Roma and nationalist populism / Eva Kourova and Stephen A. Webb -- Ga ngaandu gimubi-li yalagiirrma : (to whom it may concern) / Marcus Woolombi Waters.