I attended a lecture with guest speaker Julia Gillard entitled “Women in Professional and Public Life” held on October 5th at 6:00p.m. She spoke for approximately one hour and then held a question and answer session that lasted a little over 30 minutes. The purpose of the lecture was to create awareness and encourage all of us to fight gender discrimination and to become agents of change.
Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister of Australia from June 2010 to June 2013, and has been a champion for education and gender equality. She grew up in a household that valued education and lacked gender stereotypes, which was uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s. When in her second year at University, the government threatened to cut education funding which …show more content…
While the nursing field is largely composed of women, there are far fewer women in leadership positions or at the head of health care organizations (Sullivan, 2013). This presents us with the stereotype that women are empathetic caregivers, while men are unfeeling and competitive. Men are typically viewed as goal-oriented, driven, and thus more successful at management level positions leaving women to do the day-to-day care of bedside nursing. The results of this this skewed, yet culturally and historically accurate view of where men and women should or could be successful has led to many inequities in the field. If men had been encouraged and actively recruited to become nurses, the nursing shortage that exists today could have been diminished (Sullivan, 2013). If women felt comfortable claiming positions of power, taking credit when credit is due, and risking failure to avoid humiliation in order to become influential, we could move toward equity in upper management and leadership positions (Sullivan, 2013). Our traditional views of men’s work versus women’s work are so imbedded in us that many do not even recognize when it happens. To create change we must confront our own biases and those of others. And as Julia Gillard suggested, we need to contribute to research these deeply imbedded stereotypes so that it can be recognized and
Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister of Australia from June 2010 to June 2013, and has been a champion for education and gender equality. She grew up in a household that valued education and lacked gender stereotypes, which was uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s. When in her second year at University, the government threatened to cut education funding which …show more content…
While the nursing field is largely composed of women, there are far fewer women in leadership positions or at the head of health care organizations (Sullivan, 2013). This presents us with the stereotype that women are empathetic caregivers, while men are unfeeling and competitive. Men are typically viewed as goal-oriented, driven, and thus more successful at management level positions leaving women to do the day-to-day care of bedside nursing. The results of this this skewed, yet culturally and historically accurate view of where men and women should or could be successful has led to many inequities in the field. If men had been encouraged and actively recruited to become nurses, the nursing shortage that exists today could have been diminished (Sullivan, 2013). If women felt comfortable claiming positions of power, taking credit when credit is due, and risking failure to avoid humiliation in order to become influential, we could move toward equity in upper management and leadership positions (Sullivan, 2013). Our traditional views of men’s work versus women’s work are so imbedded in us that many do not even recognize when it happens. To create change we must confront our own biases and those of others. And as Julia Gillard suggested, we need to contribute to research these deeply imbedded stereotypes so that it can be recognized and