Institutional Oppression

Social Services Agencies

Social welfare institutions and their personnel may oppress clients in a number of ways including but not limited to the following: providing services in inaccessible locations, having unrealistic eligibility criteria, failing to understand cultural norms related to services, compromising clients’ safety or privacy in exchange for services, engaging in protocols that expose clients to traumatization or victimization, and having unrealistic fee schedules for populations needing the services. For example, a crime victim services agency may be inaccessible by public transportation; a domestic violence shelter may have no ramps or interpreters; a homeless person may not qualify for public assistance without a permanent address; or culturally specific child-rearing practices may be deemed abusive by formal authorities.

Social services agencies that do not hire gay people, older workers, minorities, women, or individuals with disabilities (who may reflect the demographics of the population being served) can also be said to practice institutional oppression.

Other Institutions

In the larger society, institutions such as schools, hospitals, police departments, churches, courts, banks, news outlets, real estate agencies, political systems, and military organizations may practice institutional oppression. This is important to human services workers because they may need to collaborate with, or provide referrals to, these services. Oppression can be material, resulting in a denial of benefits or services, or symbolic, resulting in shame or exclusion. For example, schools that celebrate Christian holiDays but not Muslim or Jewish ones may make non-Christian children feel stigmatized or ashamed of their faith. The indirect effect of this could be taunting, avoidance, or violence from peers. Thus, institutional oppression can [Page 722]have wide-ranging and indirect consequences even when it takes symbolic forms.

Inaction as Oppression

Institutional oppression can take the form of inactions as well as actions, as for example, in the situation previously described. Schools using History books that portray only white males as important scientists can, for example, be construed as practicing institutional oppression.

Service providers in social agencies, in the course of conducting intake interviews, may fail to ask questions allowing for the possibility of gay relationships. Assisted-living facilities may assume their clients cannot have romantic relationships (and therefore allow them no privacy). Agencies that fail to install accessible bathrooms for their physically disabled clients, realtors who neglect to show nonwhite clients homes in upscale neighborhoods, and policies that discourage doctors from offering Medicaid (but not other) patients pain relief are additional examples of institutional oppression by omission.

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