By Simran Grewal
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on nursing that has uncovered the atrocities they face in the workforce to the public. Articles, such as “Nurses Have Finally Learned What They’re Worth” in the New York Times, have begun to shed light on the challenges that this undervalued profession has faced. Nurses experience many inequalities in the workplace such as being underpaid, understaffed, physically and verbally abused, and so much more. All of these inequalities can be explained due to the fact that nursing is viewed as ‘women’s work’, or a job that women are supposed to do. The fact that women make up 91% of all nurses in Canada, as of 2019, partially explain why it is viewed as a feminine career. However, the fact that the career exemplifies many traditionally feminine qualities allows it to be looked down upon which subsequently harms nurses.
When women first entered the workforce, they were put into traditionally female occupations. These occupations were ones that were seen as an extension of what they did in the home, such as making clothes or housekeeping. Being a caretaker for children and family was also the role of the women in the house, and therefore that role extended into healthcare. Nursing was seen as a viable career for women as women are naturally perceived as emotional and maternal while other careers that require leadership, such as positions in government, were not seen as roles that needed these feminine qualities. Since caregiving and nurturing are careers that women were told they could do because of their nature, they were obviously looked down upon. Many would think that as these ideas of innate female and male qualities in careers decrease, so would the perception that careers are gendered and therefore that nursing is a feminine career. However, that is unfortunately untrue. In 2019, IntraHealth International, Nursing Now, and Johnson & Johnson launched a report on gender-related barriers to nurse leadership worldwide. Surveys done showed that nurses are routinely perceived as lacking competence, performing low-skill tasks, and working out of altruistic and caring tendencies. This survey shows two things. First, that people still hold the idea that nursing requires caring qualities that women are traditionally thought to have. Second, it shows that nurses are perceived negatively. People have these negative ideas about nursing because the qualities thought to do the job are traditionally feminine. A study done in 2015 on Southern Ontario undergraduates tested the reaction of males when showed an ad that stressed masculinity in nursing against one that did not. The ad that stressed masculinity had the slogan “Are you man enough to be a nurse?” while the other simply asked “Interested in a career in nursing?”. The undergraduates ratings of the male nurse in the masculinity emphasized ad were lower than in the neutral male nursing ad. This was done to investigate whether the emphasis that these are ‘manly’ men going into a perceived female role would make the participants uncomfortable, which it was proven to have done. This study speaks to the fact that nursing is viewed as a female role and that idea negatively impacted the way men in that field were perceived.
All of this discussion about how nursing is perceived to be female hopefully has clued you into why so many nurses are treated badly. Sexism is still rampant in the workplace, as we see through the persisting gender pay gap and the fact that women are generally employed in less high ranking roles when compared to men. This gender based discrimination is exuberated enormously when the majority of people working in the career is women. Nurses are unpaid and treated poorly in their jobs and the reason why people feel that they can be this way to nurses is due to its perception of being a feminine career. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many of these inequalities and hopefully will bring change to this profession. At the end of the day, the pandemic has shown us how valuable the profession is and how unfairly the people in this critical role are being treated.
