Putting Feminism to Work

This book explores the place of feminism and uptake of trauma in contemporary workagainst sexual violence. Egan presents a refreshing alternative position on argumentsabout the co-optation or erasure of feminism within institutionalized, professionalizedservices for sexual assault victims. Using original research on Australian sexual assaultservices, Putting Feminism to Work effectively illustrates how feminist concepts andideas have become routinized in contemporary services and enacted in daily practices withsurvivors and communities. The book engages with, yet resists, the notion thatfeminist engagement with knowledge (trauma) based in psychiatry and clinicalpsychology is incompatible with feminism or inevitably reduces sexual violence to aproblem of individual healing. Indeed Egan argues that the productive wayspractitioners integrate neurobiological understandings of trauma into their worksuggests rich possibilities for reintroducing a non-essentialist biology of the body intofeminist theories of sexual violence. Scholars, students and practitioners working in the fields of violence against women,sociology, women's and gender studies, health, social work and policy studies, as wellas the emerging field of sociologically informed trauma studies, will find this book ofinterest.