Daring to Care

American Nursing and Second-Wave Feminism

Susan Gelfand Malka

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780252074813, 9780252032479
• eBook ISBN: 9780252053948
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference
• Index: Social Sciences

Beginning in the 1960s, second-wave feminism inspired and influenced dramatic changes in the nursing profession. Susan Gelfand Malka argues that feminism helped end nursing's subordination to medicine and provided nurses with greater autonomy and professional status. She discusses two distinct eras in nursing history. The first extended from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when feminism seemed to belittle the occupation in its analysis of gender subordination but also fueled nursing leaders' drive for greater authority and independence. The second era began in the mid-1980s, when feminism grounded in the ethics of care appealed to a much broader group of caregivers and was incorporated into nursing education. While nurses accepted aspects of feminism, they did not necessarily identify as feminists. Nonetheless, they used, passed on, and developed feminist ideas that brought about nursing school curricula changes and the increase in self-directed and specialized roles available to caregivers in the twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1. Nursing in the Postwar Period
• Part 2. Nursing and Equality Feminism
• Part 3. Nursing in the Era of Difference Feminism
• Epilogue: A More Inclusive History
• Notes
• Index