Social Work and Social Justice: A Conceptual Review.

This article examines how the concept of social justice is defined and operationalized within the profession of social work, highlighting a lack of consensus despite its centrality in guiding documents such as the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) standards. A conceptual literature review found that social work definitions of social justice predominantly rely on John Rawls’s theory of distributive justice, Martha Nussbaum’s and Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, and the definition in The Social Work Dictionary, though none fully align with NASW’s ethical framework emphasizing advocacy and client empowerment. The study underscores tensions between social work’s stated commitment to social justice and inconsistent practice, including documented discrimination within educational and professional settings, and calls for the profession to develop a clearer, inclusive, and actionable definition of social justice that integrates advocacy, personal agency, and addresses historical inequalities. This clearer definition could enhance social work education and practice, fostering more consistent and effective efforts toward social justice.