Comments on: teaching, nursing, and second wave feminism

By: kjack

kjack — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:19:25 +0000

@Nilva

you said that, “May be the argument could be as simple as women who choose not to nurse shouldn’t be in nursing.I wouldn’t want to be nursed by a ‘brilliant’ person who has been incentivised to work in the nursing field and then doesn’t provide the care I need.”

but the argument is not about whether or not people want to be a nurse, it’s about how society undervalues women that hold positions as nurses, teacher, and any careers that are considered “womens work”.

By: kjack

kjack — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:09:04 +0000

@Ted
The average salary for teachers in California is pretty high compared to teachers in other states, so you can’t assume that all teachers (and nurses and librarians) are doing as well.

Even with that in mind, you said that the teachers were expected to purchase school/classroom supplies out of their own pocket.

The idea is to put more societal value on these people and positions.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:58:57 +0000

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Lucy

http://maternitymotherhood.net

By: A Nurse

A Nurse — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:38:22 +0000

Hello, I’m a nurse student and this post is very helpul to me. Thank you!

By: Ted

Ted — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:20:16 +0000

Actually nurses aren’t that badly paid, at least in some areas. (I’m married to one and I get to deposit her paycheck.) In California they’ve leveraged the combination of a labor shortage and a strong, innovative union into some decent wages and benefits, by and large. Teachers have been pretty successful at organizing for fair pay too — so much so that here in San Francisco, until recently, they were expected to spend part of their own wages on classroom supplies that the school authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t budget for.
For every one of those heroic women in real life, there must have been about 1000 in the uplifting literature. In the real world, until the 1940s and 50s, most nurses (and teachers and librarians too, I hate to break it to you) were beaten-down conscripts. If you look around, you can’t help noticing that brilliance and motivation are more widespread than ever in all three of those professions now. Being able to count on a decent paycheck and health insurance frees you up to do good work day in and day out, without all that exhausting drama around heroism.

By: Missiy

Missiy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:14:31 +0000

I am in my last year of college to become a teacher. I am also a single mother to a 2 year old boy. For a split second after I made the decision to become an educator, I had some guilt that I was being a bad feminist. I felt that I should be pursuing a job in a field that was had been off limits before in order to be a true feminist. It took me a minute to realize that feminism isn’t about moving up in the job market, but having the choice to do so. I have chose to become a teacher because that is what I want to do and I am proud of the women who have come before me in this field.

By: Lawrence Krubner

Lawrence Krubner — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:49:22 +0000

The more I think about it, the more I am troubled by the title of this post:

teaching, nursing, and second wave feminism

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to title this:

teaching, nursing, and sexism

I mean, the problem isn’t feminism, right? The problem is sexism.

By: Lawrence Krubner

Lawrence Krubner — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:52:37 +0000

The larger context is the erosion of wages in America from 1973 to 1995, and then again from 2001. It would be easier for America to complete its social transformation if only the economy could recover the vigor it enjoyed 1945-1973, when wages were rising rapidly for both men and women. America’s social transformation is likely to remain partial, incomplete and broken till such time as the economy recovers its health. And by “health” I am not referring to the short-term crisis of the current recession, but to the long-term crisis that has seen the broad collapse of America’s once secure middle class.

By: Andromeda

Andromeda — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:29:50 +0000

And as I see the comments have gone in that direction…

I’m in grad school now to career-change to librarianship — not sure exactly which version of it yet, as it turns out there’s an awful lot of things you can do with the degree. But I notice that, persistently, the bits that actually pay pretty good money (e.g. working for corporations — law librarians, medical librarians, things that may not even have “library” in their title like knowledge management or content management or what-have-you) — these things are disproportionately done by males. (And there are *very* few men in librarianship — my program as a whole is 80, 90 percent female — but in my corporate libraries class, or my databases class? You know, the ones with material for which you might someday get paid? Around 50/50.)

Cause? Effect? Persistent fractal reproduction of society? I dunno. But me, whatever subfield I go into, it will be one of the ones that pays this time, kthx.

By: Nilva

Nilva — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:13:41 +0000

What I have noticed is that more men appear to choose nursing as a career path then they would have previously and then climb the hierarchy much faster then their female counterpart. Just anecdotal observation from having been in health since 1980′s.

May be the argument could be as simple as women who choose not to nurse shouldn’t be in nursing.I wouldn’t want to be nursed by a ‘brilliant’ person who has been incentivised to work in the nursing field and then doesn’t provide the care I need. Perhaps it is about retention and keeping the people who choose to work in nursing eg looking at the patient to nurse ratio.So one can look at second wave feminism as being a good thing for nursing….it got rid of women who should never have been nurses.Apologies for being so blunt.