Gender Inequalities In Nursing

Superior Essays
The field of gender studies is an area of interdisciplinary study that analyzes the social aspect of gender and how it relates to different subcategories of life. It explores what it entitles to be female or male; and the experiences a person may encounter due to their gender, sexuality, race, class, etc. Because gender studies analyzes the social aspect of gender, it coherently applies to the subcategory of gender in the workplace. In most fields and professions gender has an effect on the way an individual is treated; and depending on the discipline it may have a greater weight in certain fields than in others. Nursing is one of the many fields where the understanding of gender studies can help you relate and identify why there is gender inequality within the field of nursing. Our society’s gender system, which is a “system of meaning and differentiation among people linked to sexes, through social arrangements,” according to Kramer and Beutel is an up hold of views our culture values and plays a major role in the field of nursing. (Kramer & Beutel, 2013, p. 2) I plan to enter the field of nursing and as you may know, this is a …show more content…
Being either female or male can influence the experiences a person encounters and the way others view a person. Gender inequality within the field of nursing has always been prevalent but has been brought to awareness as more and more men are beginning to pursue this profession. Understanding gender studies will help how this field of study applies to the field of nursing simply because in almost all profession there is in-differences between the manner in which a female or male is treated. Gender plays a major part in the events one may go through and how a person’s gender, sexuality, race, class, etc. may shape their possibilities of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    “Gender and power: Nurses and doctors in Canada” was written by Barbara Zelek and Susan P. Phillips. This article describes a study done with nurses in January of 2000 collecting data on female nurses’ reactions to a vignette survey. The purpose of the study was to observe if male physicians have more authority in the eyes of female nurses than female physicians do. Each survey had four clinical senarios alternating gender of the doctor. Then the responsesbased on the sex of the physician were studied.…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Johnson defines a patriarchal society as being male-dominated when there is a clear power difference between men and women that is manifested in the way culture is shaped in the interests of men, and the women are treated as inferior. The male role is characterized by a monopoly of authority that holds them innately at a standard that is higher than that of a woman, thus labeling power as customarily male. Through the gendering of professions, this is demonstrated in the workforce. In nursing, a job that is inherently assumed to be female, nurses are secondary to doctors, a profession populated by males. In this position, they are paid less, treated as assistants to the doctors that make decisions, and are frequently sexualized in media with no questioning of the traditional image portrayal.…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Introduction The immigration population in America is ever-growing, and so is the diversity or our nation. With the new arrival of immigrants brings about a wide abundance of disparities for this population- ranging from occupational, financial, to health care. As members of the Nursing Program at the University of Louisville, we are amongst the group who should work towards eliminating these disparities particularly in healthcare. As nurses, it is our duty to educate and be an advocate to our patients.…

    • 267 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Status Shield Essay

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the chapter eight reading by Hochschild, I found the idea of the status shield presented in class particularly interesting. I never thought of the way we (as a society) view a man or a woman in a specific career path would be due to this social/cultural perception of the career. I think a common career that represents this idea of the status shield is careers in the medical field but primarily focusing on nurses. I know we touched on this a little in class, but often we see more nurses of female gender than that of a male gender. For example, two years ago I took a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) class and out of the twenty-five students enrolled only one of them was male.…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It has been more than sixty-five years since World War II ended. The twentieth century was full of segregation between race and gender, nightmare worthy diseases, unimaginable forms of technology, and monthly pay that could not buy a loaf of bread in today’s world. The differences in 1950 and 2016 are mind-boggling. Therefore, these two papers had to be incredibly different regarding style, language, and topic. Changing these three things depends on one thing, audience.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    While working in Riddle Memorial Hospital, I experienced this problem hands on. My supervisor would always choose the men to transport or move the patients instead of the women because the men appeared stronger. Women and men are both capable of having a nursing job and should not be discriminated against. In the…

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Pay Gap In Nursing

    • 1327 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Typically bedside nursing or chronic care nursing in hospitals has the smallest disparity. Many women are more nurturing than their male counterparts. They choose to go into pediatrics or neonatal care, while men have chosen to work in fields like trauma or anesthesiology. More women must continue to pursue their advanced degrees like MSN so that they can break through into management to help bring about change to pay…

    • 1327 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Registered Nurse

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages

    There are many job opportunities due to becoming a nurse. You can be an overseas nurse, an active military nurse, a VA (veterans) nurse, a pediatric nurse, and others. Nursing is also open to men and women. “According to Minority Nursing writer, Tri Pham in her piece titled “Men in Nursing”, a recent statistic that was taken in 2008 highlights the undeniable difference in the number of men that work as nurses as opposed to women. Within that year there were a total of 3,063,163 nurses that were both licensed and registered, but only 6.6 percent of the over 3 million registered nurses were male, and only a slightly higher percentage of 16.8 were non-Caucasian males working in the nursing field (Men in…

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Female patients prefer that the same gender take care of them and tends to be very modest, asking for privacy when using the commode or dressing. Occasionally, nursing assignments has changed to accommodate their cultural…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Diversity In Nursing

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The nation’s foreign-born population is growing, making it essential for the nursing profession to become culturally diverse, so we can pejorate health care disparities and provide culturally sensitive care to everyone (Loucel, 2012). Throughout this paper I will discuss the definition what diversity means to me, mention the benefits of a diverse health care workforce and what barriers still remain with diversity in the nursing profession as well as discuss my own cultural background and how it affects the nursing care that I provide. Diversity to me means differences. Each and every person on this planet has differences in their ethnicity, race, religion, spirituality, social and financial status, gender, age, political beliefs, physical…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Anyway one puts it, women have had a hard road in equality, something that was still occurring during the Vietnam War. Women, at the time, were regarded as “second class soldiers” (Carlson, “Women, the Unknown Soldiers”). The nurses had a rough time, especially in training. Apparently, orientation for nurses was a “bloody hell” (Carlson, “Women, the Unknown Soldiers”). “The surgeon threw a pair of scissors at me and said, "Don't just stand there.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Diversity In Nursing

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages

    However, there has been a long standing gender bias present within nursing in relation to males. Florence Nightingale did not condone male participation in nursing occupations. Nightingale maintained the notion that men were incapable of maintaining the characteristics necessary for effective and efficient nursing care, stating that men are “hard and horny” (Masters, 2005). Gender bias also maintains prevalence within nursing text and journals, due to the fact that the historical involvement of male nursing contributions has been obscured. This is in arrears to the ubiquitous utilization of feminine pronouns such as "she" and “her” in nursing schools and hospitals (Roth & Coleman, 2008).…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women’s Health Nurse Practioners (WHNP) must be fast learners and have the willingness to pursue extended education as necessary. They must have the ability to lead and manage other nursing staff in a variety of nursing environments, implying that they must also have excellent communication skills. Most importantly, WHNP must be competent in health assessment and diagnosis by employing various tools and techniques to assess and synthesize clinical data. Moreover, WHNP must demonstrate competence in health promotion, healthcare management, and therapeutic intervention by collaborating with other healthcare professionals, clients, and family members in making informed clinical decisions. They also must have empathy and quick reasoning.…

    • 1466 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The purpose of this study was to establish a profile of men in nursing in Western Australia and explore the perception of men in nursing from the perspective of male and female nurses. On top of that, other research project objectives were identified as well. Due to the low numbers of men in nursing, it is crucial to establish a profile of these men and the perception of men in the nursing field from both male and female nurses. There was no theoretical framework present in this research…

    • 2457 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Nurses still to this day have to deal with sexism in the health care profession. Nursing has always been a traditionally female dominant profession and doctors were primarily male. Although the number of men in nursing is rising, there are still fewer men in the profession. It is true that many nurses are women, but 10% of nurses are male. One of the main oppressions in the nursing field is that nursing has a perception of being a “women’s job.”…

    • 2078 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays