Is Counselling a Feminist Practice?
Abstract
Women’s efforts to influence policies have complex effects, which are often difficult to
evaluate. This paper identifies four themes in feminist politics through which to analyse
whether a particular intervention involving substantial numbers of women – that of
counselling in the UK – can be understood as a feminist practice. These themes are concerned
with gender equality, women’s autonomy, recognition of diversity among women and the
deconstruction of gender norms. In its early post-war origins prior to the emergence of second
wave feminism, and in the stories recounted by women practitioners at the turn of
millennium, counselling emerges as contradictory and ambivalent in relation to these themes
in feminist politics.