Editorial

Gendering nursing

Nel Glass
Nursing Research Unit, ACU National/St Vincent’s and Mercy Private Hospital, Fitzroy VIC

Kierrynn Davis
School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW

PP: 55

Article Text

Our Reflections

In the early seventies Kierrynn worked in a large teaching hospital in Sydney, which employed its first male student nurse. Nel started her nursing 'training' with a group of 150 students, only three were males.

In the early eighties Nel worked in a Sydney metropolitan hospital and the 'Matron' employed only female nurses because it was said she didn't like male nurses or men. And of those times, Kierrynn said if you were a male nurse the predominant view was that you had to be gay.

Now these were great days if you didn't like men or believe in men in nursing. For both Nel and Kierrynn, clinical nursing in the seventies and eighties often involved male nurses only working in the male ends of wards. It was not uncommon to have female patients saying they would not be cared for by male nurses. And, from their experiences these requests were never refused; they were always accepted without questioning. Other reflections included, male nurses being expected to specialise in psychiatric nursing and were always good for help with lifting heavy patients-wardsmen were not needed if you had a male nurse on your ward!

In the early nineties Times have changed considerably. It was expected that men might choose a career in nursing, irrespective of their gender and /or sexuality, and that they could choose where to work. Men worked in both female and male wards and were interspersed throughout all specialties including specific women's areas such as midwifery and gynaecology.

The present

Today, there is no hindrance to males entering nursing degrees and the subsequent employment of male registered nurses is a recognisable part of nursing worldwide. Any nurse who holds a fixed belief against males in nursing carries minimal weight in contemporary nursing today. It could be argued that the implementation of equal employment opportunity and anti-discrimination has resulted in more men being employed and subsequently functioning effectively throughout all domains of nursing practice, administration and education. However, an argument definitely remains as the nursing literature is filled with articles concerning gender specific issues and nursing.

We would suggest that it is useful to reflect on the notion of gendering the nursing profession and where this sits for nurses as we consider contemporary nursing. In consideration of this, we would put forward three issues to reflect upon:

1. A (one) gendered approach;
2. Acknowledging femininity in nursing;
3. Adapting to femininity

The (one) gendered approach

In regard to the first approach, some would argue that nursing has now adopted a more gendered approach and as a consequence nursing has come of age! Having men as well as women employed in nursing has put nursing out there as a universal one-gendered (non-sexist) occupation. This blended and possibly united approach has empowered the nursing profession and, in turn, nursing has been afforded greater prestige and status primarily due to the education, motivation and assertiveness of both male and female nurses (Waters, Postic, Duroucher, Donker and Brenner, 1999). Or is it with the influx of more advance 'male defined' technology (Lison-Pick, 1999) that nursing needs more male nurses to balance the over-emphasis on femininity in nursing?

Acknowledging femininity in nursing The second approach considers the links between female gender characteristics and what nurses know and experience as nursing. As Peggy Chinn, claims:

"Nursing as a social category has acquired gender traits that are associated with 'feminine', regardless of the sex of its individual members [and] the discipline itself, like the individuals who comprise the discipline, acquires ways of seeing the world that derive from gendered female experience." (1998: 462)

Therefore, is it appropriate for nurses to have a vested interest in the implications of more men choosing nursing? Recent research from this approach claims that men have as many 'female' attributes as women and are therefore suited just as much to nursing as women (Fisher, 1999).

Adapting to femininity

The third approach suggests that if nursing and nurses are going to prosper we must move past just an acknowledgement of ways that women nurse, to also encompass the uniqueness of women nurses experience from socio-political and historical perspectives (Glass, 1998). Therefore, if men are to succeed in nursing they will have to adapt to the feminisation of nursing (Watson, 1999).

Irrespective of which approach is the most suited to nursing, we would claim that the nursing literature has exploded with discussions of men in nursing (Waters et. al. 1999; Evans, 1997), women in nursing (Glass & Walter, 1998; Taylor, 1998), and more recently gendered approaches to nursing (Chinn, 1998). This is a strong message that there are specific issues with which we are still struggling.

What we are clear about is that increasing the numbers of men in nursing has not necessarily resulted in a smooth transition to male domination in the profession. We would argue that one of the major difficulties has been the fact that nurses, as a group has been slow to adapt to changes in the profession. Moreover, the literature expounds with the debates regarding the positive and negative effect of men in nursing, particularly regarding advancement of men to senior nursing positions more quickly than women (Evans, 1997).

Many nurses have clung to what we have experienced in our nursing days, irrespective of whether those days were the most effective and/or satisfying for nurses and the nursing profession. So this leads us to where do we go in contemporary nursing with what we know? Is it enough to for one to say 'well the times have changed, nurses experienced some difficulty-but that's the way it is' and leave it as that?

Questions which may be useful to consider are:

• Is the impact of information technology bringing in the boys from surfing at our gorgeous beaches to surfing the net and vice versa?
• Is the infiltration of more, and more, technology into nursing a strong reason for having more men in nursing because technology is 'stereotypically' male defined? (Lison-Pick, 1999).

Therefore:

• Should we consider that the 'high touch/high tech' debate be split on gender lines?
• Will the increased numbers of men in nursing push us towards an archetypal shift from the feminine to the masculine? (Watson, 1999).

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