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Daring to Care: American Nursing and Second-Wave Feminism By Susan Gelfand Malka (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007) (219 pages; $25.00 paper)
Traditional wisdom holds that nursing and feminism are naturally antithetical to each other. Yet in this work, based on her doctoral dissertation, Susan Gelfand Malka argues that the relationship between nursing and feminism was in part mutually beneficial. As the strident feminist movement of the 1960s evolved into the softer feminism of the 1980s, nurses were empowered. They "Dared to Care."
Daring to Care addresses the impact of the women's movement of the 1960s to the 1980s, feminism's "second wave," on nursing education and practice. (The women's movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries is known as the "first wave.") From historical and feminist perspectives, Malka describes how nurses evolved during these years from submissive handmaidens to scientific professionals, partially in response to second-wave feminism. Acknowledging this link between feminism and nursing will inform the current debate surrounding issues such as the escalating visibility of nurse practitioners, the shortage of bedside nurses, and the proposed professional doctorate in nursing.
Daring to Care opens by introducing the reader to Nightingale's founding of...