Women's Studies and the Struggle to Find the Voice of Nursing

This year's National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Duke Energy Convention Center and the Millennium Hotel, June 19-22.

The conference will engage feminists from across the country in panels, workshops, guided tours, letcutres and performance art presentations.

For additional information see http://www.nwsa.org/myconference/.

I gave $100.00 to the Friends of Women's Studies this year to support the J.D. and M.S. in Women's Studies joint degree program at the University of Cincinnati.

Now if I could do it all over again, I would have obtain a MSN in community health and JD or enroll in the JD and MS in Women's Studies joint degree program at UC.  See http://www.artsci.uc.edu/womens_studies.

I assumed I would work in a large firm for my law career; fast forward 11 years later and I have my own law practice defending nurses; the majority of my clients, like the nursing profession, are women.

I was asked to sit on the Board of the Friends of Women's Studies program at the University of Cincinnati; I am giving it serious consideration because it fits into the big picture of how I see myself as a RN, attorney, and mother and my current path.

My current career path is licensure defense and I enjoy licensure defense but it hurts. It hurts me personally to see so many of us wounded personally, emotionally, and professionally by licensure investigations and Board action. I spoke with a nurse today who has faced licensure actions in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana and I could hear the frustration and pain in her voice.

A history of women struggles in the United States could in my opinion begin and end with an account of the past, present, and future of nursing and the inherent struggles and issues in nursing, a female-dominated profession. If you haven't already read, Nursing, Physician Control, and the Medical Monopoly: Historical Perspectives on the Gender Inequality in Roles, Rights, and Range of Practice by Thetis M. Group and Joan I. Roberts. 

Female dominated professions and work environments in your opinion have what factors and traits in common? What are the benefits of being a member of and practicing in a male dominated profession and work environment?

As a profession, are we eating our "young and old" in nursing workplaces, nursing educational settings, and at the state regulatory level with state nursing boards?

Comments

[RehabRN]

LaTonia:

I think the advantage of being in a male-dominated profession many times is the aspect that people are not so bent on "getting justice."

Women are so often victims, that sometimes, they act as perpetrators of violence (horizontal or otherwise) in nursing in order to achieve "justice."

The "justice", mind you, is not always for the actual occurrence that cause terrible repercussions for those involved (when facing the State BON) but for those involved who need to "feel justice" is being served to assuage their own feelings.

Emotionalization of "justice" is a BIG problem.