Feminist Family Therapy

Feminist family therapy emerged in the late 1970s both as a critique of mainstream family therapy’s approach that utilized systemic assumptions and as a model for incorporating feminist principles into therapeutic practice. The feminist critique of family therapy resulted in a dramatic increase in the attention to gender, sex roles, race, culture, and power in family theory and practice. The feminist framework serves broadly as a critical pedagogy within family therapy to identify and address ways in which gender may be combined with other types of oppression, such as race, class, culture, and sexual orientations. The role of differences in power and authority within the therapy setting also is identified and addressed in the therapy process.