How do you understand a gender -sensitive approach in familly systems therapy?

Hi Ivana, Gender sensitivity has been incorporated into family therapies including family systems therapy since the advent of feminist movements ins. Broadly known as feminist family therapies, it can generally be described as a body of ideas about gender hierarchies and its impact on family well being. The whole idea is to take into account whether the basic tenets of family system therapies such as complementarity, circularity or neutrality are in any means oppressive to women or not. The earliest writing published that delves into the need to look into this was an article published by Rachel H-Mustin titled "A feminist approach to family therapy". She asserts in her paper that often family therapy treats women unequally in regard to family role and duties.In several papers published following this, by and large the view upheld by most feminist family theorists was that inequalities in family structure cannot be corrected solely by improving relationships amongst family members or by creating new family hierarchical structures. Accordingly they explained that the goals of family systems therapy should instead focus on facilitating growth of a strong, self sufficient and worthy woman who is in control of her resources thereby facilitating an equal partnership in the whole family system.There are several theoretical orientations that collectively state that sexism, favouring men or women, for that matter, dampens the well being of the family subsystems and that therapy should take this premise into account. Accordingly any therapy or counselling that heeds to sexism can lead to poor results in therapy outcomes. In short the primary focus of gender sensitive approaches to family systems therapy will involve non-sexist counselling and aims to facilitate empowerment of women and focus on a gender-aware counselling.J Lewis has given a detailed account of the primary requisites for non-sexist counselling and how to work towards gender-aware counselling in her paper titled "Gender sensitivity and family empowerment" published in Family psychology and counselling,.It should be noted that gender sensitive approaches do not implicate or work against the positive interests of men. Some notable techniques based on gender sensitive approaches employ methods such as 'gender inquiry' which helps individuals understand the effects of gender role mandates in family functioning. It also employs a technique called 'gender coevaluation' which aims at facilitating an understanding of the influence of reciprocal nature of female-male family members on each other.As noted earlier, feminist perspectives in family systems therapies do not imply 'male bashing', instead models such as Gender Role Strain Model by Levant and Pollack actively explains the need for empowering men to give up certain privileges and added burdens of male responsibilities and help them acknowledge their vulnerabilities and seek help when necessary.To summarise, gender sensitive approaches to family systemic therapy is aimed at giving emphasis on women - men equality and stabilising power hierarchies to suit the interests of both genders irrespective of the negative gender stereotypes that is dictated by the society at large. It hold increasing importance in the current socio cultural context where there is an increasing rearrangement within family subsystems owing to more women taking to careers as an important and defining characteristic of their lives. In light of the same a gender sensitive approach to family systems therapy will help restabilize the family to accommodate to the new norms of gender roles.Hope this answers your question.

Family relationships are a principal source of mental health and psychopathology for individuals. Family interaction patterns tend to repeat across generations.   Family health requires a balance of connection and individuation.   Family flexibility is a core trait that prevents family dysfunction.   The triad is the minimum unit for a complex understanding of family interactions. Individuals' symptoms frequently have meaning within the family's interaction patterns or worldview. Major contributions to the understanding of schizophrenia only occurred after researchers accepted the notion that it is a biologically based disease.  Researchers began to study the influence of family factors intensify problems and lead to relapse. ØExpressed Emotion (EE): uRefers to the level of criticalness and emotional overinvolvement of a family member to another family member with a psychiatric impairment. uMeasured during a Camberwell Family Interview, a 90-minute semi-structured interview. uPeople from high EE families are likely to relapse three to four times more rapidly. uExpressed emotion has also been used to predict relapse in depression, manic-depressive disorder, obesity. ØTwo Standard Criticisms: uIndividual psychological factors were neglected. uLack of clear operationalization of the constructs for research purposes. ØThree New Critiques: uFeminist Critique uRace/Ethnic Diversity uSystems in Context: Need to Examine Larger Social Systems.  Feminist Critique: Doherty and Baptiste (1993) suggest that feminism has entered the mainstream of theoretical work in family therapy.  Main points of the feminist critique: uTraditional theory ignored gender. uTraditional theory ignored sociocultural and political contexts of family life. uTraditional theory reinforced traditional roles. uTraditional theory ignored issues of power and differential vulnerability of men and women to exploitation (Doherty & Baptiste, 1993, p. 518).

I am amased by your knowledge.