Constructing Feminist Counselling:'Equality' as a Discursive Resource in Counsellors' Talk

摘要

Feminist counselling has an uneasy relationship with mainstream counsel-ling approaches. Feminist counselling/therapy is diverse both in theory and in the practiceof those who refer to themselves as feminist counsellors, which means that many counsel-lors outside the feminist tradition are unclear about what it entails. There are also tensionsbetween the discourses of feminism and of therapy (Maracek and Kravetz, 1998). Thismakes for confusion in the wider counselling population about the nature and validity offeminist counselling. In this study I asked counsellors (not selected on the basis of feministidentification) about their understanding of feminist counselling. They attached four mainmeanings to feminist counselling: exclusivity, imposing a viewpoint, broader perspectivesand a commitment to equality. In exploring the validity of feminist counselling the partici-pants drew on competing meanings of equality, namely relational equality and externalequality. This contrasts with much feminist counselling writing, which claims these ascomplementary.