The Occupational Prestige of Social Work

A survey of two hundred and fifty six social work educators pertaining to the prestige of social workers indicated that social workers were viewed as havinq less prestige than fourteen of the twenty-two occupations with whom they were compared. Factors both contributing to and lessening the prestige of social work were identified, as well as suggestions for enhancing social work's prestige. Through the years, social research and other literature have provided various evidence of the diminished credibility and devalued status of the social work profession. More than twenty years following publication of Ernest Greenwood's observation in Social Work that the profession was seeking to rise within the professional hierarchy, 1 numerous arguments have accumulated that social workers have not achieved the regard and esteem accorded other occupations. Indeed, low professional autonomy and authority within human service agencies have served to further illuminate social work's image as a "semiprofession." Additionally, recent research by Condie et. al. suggests that despite the fact that the public may have greater awareness of social work roles than in past years, they still feel they would not consult a social worker for a personal problem. The authors conclude that the profession may lag behind the ministry, medicine, and psychiatry in prestige. 4 Perhaps the most direct confrontation to the profession in recent years was provided by Richan and Mendelsohn who perceptively described social work as an "unloved profession," overdependent, insecure, unloved by clients it has stopped serving, and even unloved by itself. "Seeking professional status, they are second-class citizens in the ranks of the professions." 5 This situation may be compounded by what Max Lerner persuasively views as an identity crisis surrounding various professions. He suggests that social work, among others, must recapture the sense of vocation or calling implicit in its helping function. 6 It has been noted elsewhere that much energy has been expended in studying the image, status, and role of the social worker and considerable research has focused on the way social work is viewed by other professions. Little attention, however, has been directed to systematic study by social workers of their standinq in the professional hierarcy. The purpose of this research is to examine the social worker's prestige through the perceptions of social work educators who represent social work among the hierarchy of academic disciplines. A mailed questionnaire survey of graduate social work educators was conducted during the summer of 1978 to determine: 1) the way social work educators perceived the prestige accorded social workers relative to the prestige they believed was accorded members of twenty two other occupations, 2) what social worker educators believed contributed to the prestige of the social work profession, 3) what educators believed lessened the prestige of the social work profession. and 4) what educators thought social work practitioners had to do to improve their prestige. Occupational Prestige It is known that all complex societies are characterized by a prestige ordering of occupations. Knowledge and skill are, perhaps, the most accepted determinants of such prestige, but income, difficulty of training, intelligence required, and the occupation's overall value to society, must be viewed as significant contributing factors. The ability to exercise greater control over scarce resources, authority, and privilege, ofter are granted to more valued occupations. 8 Studies of occupational prestige have been reported for many years. The well known research of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in 1947, and the replication in 1963, indicated that welfare workers ranked in prestige abQut the same as policemen, undertakers, newspaper columnists, and farm owners, but considerably lower than professors, psychologists, and public school teachers. 9 More recent research by Tremain using his Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale, located social workers with a score of 52, as compared to medical doctors (78), physicists (76), lawyers (73), psychologists and sociologists (68), government administrators (64), teachers (61), musicians (56), journalists (55), nurses (54), librarians (54), clergymen (54), peace corps members (53), stenographers (48), policemen (40), and laborers (18).l0 The extreme importance of social work's prestige as it relates to the individual practitioner, client, and the profession itself, was proposed by Kadushin as early as 1957.11 He argued that the prestige of the profession affected the social worker's self-concept, relationships with other profesisons, and feelings about his job. Kadushin drew two important conclusions at the time. First, the prestige level of social work was not as yet clearly positioned. Secondly, social work consistently ranked high on occupational prestige scales of the total range of occupations, but among the lowest of the professions listed. Tremain's published findings twenty years later tend to substantiate at least one of Kadushin's conclusions, that social work is ranked among the lowest of the professions in prestige. The literature reflects a multitude of causes for social work's diminished standing. Among these is the inability of professional schools to attract high quality students, stereotyping of social work by young people, lack of effective outcomes in practice, and the community's relatively low opinion of the clients served by the profession.12 Folger, commenting on persons who enter social welfare occupations, is particularly condescending. He believes social welfare personnel are particularly unique since the majority have not obtained professional degrees prior to job entry. Domination by women, rapid job turnover, a large labor reserve, and indistinct boundaries in practice, contribute to low salaries and inability to attract men. 13 While this portrayal may not be entirely accurate, it does carry some grains of truth. In fact, a more recent discussion by Kadushin suggests that men in social work may suffer from a "role strain" in relations with colleagues, clients, and the community as members of a profession categorized as female. 14 While MIen do successfully adapt within the profession, the implication still remains that the profession's prestige may in some way be lessened.