Gender Socialization In Nursing

As the baby sister of my family, I wanted to do everything that my older brothers did. They played hockey, so I wanted to play hockey. One brother played trombone, so I wanted to play trombone. The socially constructed norms of society often thwarted me from doing so. My brothers would tell me to go play with dolls instead. Obviously we weren’t born with girls wearing dresses playing with dolls and guys playing sports and aggressive games. Gender socialization is what taught my brothers that I shouldn’t be playing hockey and taught me to play with dolls and act girly. That is all part of socially constructed gender roles. In elementary school, I wanted to play my brother’s trombone. He refused to let me play it. The trombone section is 99% …show more content…
Nursing is a gender typed profession. As a female, I was always pushed to the “feminine” careers like nursing or teaching. I chose nursing as my major. Though I’d like to think that I made that decision on my own, I know that the gender roles have pushed me into nursing. Jasielska argues that “the reasons for choosing a masculine or feminine profession do not depend on biological sex but they do depend on psychological gender” (24). Since gender is socially constructed and I identify my gender as female, that has definitely impacted my decision of career. A lot of women must feel the push to do “feminine” careers because “women are over-represented in education and health care (70% of all employees) and almost completely absent in heavy industry, building and construction or finance” (Jasielka …show more content…
Alongside that, “women earn about 80% of the average male hourly wage” (Drolet 30). Unfortunately, this is going to really affect my future. Though I may be more qualified than a man or do the same job better, I may still earn a lesser wage than a male. On top of that “men in nursing also report more favorable relationships with physicians than their female colleagues, which may be related to their position as men in a patriarchal society, or may be related to a social performance of gender that is more consistent with medicine 's predominantly masculinized social interactions” (Kellet et al. 83). Kellet et al. also argued “the disproportionate number of men in nursing leadership positions and in “high status specialties" such as critical care, emergency, nurse anesthesia, and nursing education are often cited as evidence for men’s relative gender advantage” (83). This will shape my future career by causing me to work extra hard to get a promotion over a male colleague or to simply have good relationships with higher up bosses. Gender inequality and patriarchy are two of the main issues that fire up the feminist in me. I hope as the years pass that those issues as well as the gender pay gap cease to exist. Until then, all women are going to continue to experience