ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susan Gelfand Malka is a former nurse and nursing instructor who teaches American and women's history at the University of Maryland

REVIEWS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures   ix
Acknowledgments   xi
List of Abbreviations   xv
Introduction   1

PART 1. NURSING IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD
1. Hospitals, Hierarchies, and the Duty to Care   13
2. Nursing Education in the Age of the Apron   26
3. Reforming and Liberating Nursing Education   47

PART 2. NURSING AND EQUALITY FEMINISM
4. Nursing Education and the End of the Apron   63
5. Nursing Work, Culture, and Identity   89

PART 3. NURSING IN THE ERA OF DIFFERENCE FEMINISM
6. Nursing and the Feminist Enlightenment   119
7. New Pathways for Nurses   135
Epilogue: A More Inclusive History   163
Notes   171
Index   213