Response to readings on feminism in the medical field

The overarching theme I’m seeing through the works of Mendez, Kaminsky, and Turner is a responsibility of feminism to not only address gender issues, but also to address the places in society that disadvantage a particular population. These three authors chose to focus on healthcare and who has access to healthcare. In these readings, we not only talk about the limited access of women into the medical field in a career sense, but also the limited access of racial minorities and the lower-class.

In response to this, these women decide to become soldiers in white coats that try to change this. Mendez views herself as an educator that enlightens disadvantaged and uneducated populations on ways to lead healthier lives and to protect their children from environmental health hazards. The privileged populations benefit from this information by reading newspapers, watching televisions, or from their educated and informed network of friends and families. The undocumented immigrants that Mendez encounters lack this source of information that could be the difference between life and death so she chose the medical field to fill that void.

When I first read about these women becoming nurses, I immediately thought of the argument Kaminsky brings up; the nursing field is historically a women’s occupation. I was concerned that these women were really just feeding back into the oppressive system. I wanted to see a desire to challenge traditionally male occupations and this talk or perpetuating the female population of nurses concerned me. Although I still don’t necessarily agree, I began to understand Kaminsky’s point more as I read. Kaminsky brings up how the nursing field is tied to the evolution of the feminist movement (167). Gender neutral scrubs eliminated and female nurses no longer had to salute or give way to make doctors. Furthermore, Kaminsky pressed that ultimately the difference is that women could choose the nursing field or choose another field. Kaminsky just happened to choose the nursing field and this doesn’t make her less of a feminist.

Given this, I still disagree because I think Kaminsky’s points support nursing as a “women’s field,” especially when she says that ”women are in powerful, decision-making positions in all areas of nursing, and we should see this as empowering,” (170). She says this after she has given the statistic that the nursing field is only 6% male so that makes me wonder what these “powerful decision-making” actually looks like if it’s not over the “powerful decision-making” of men. The way I see it, all women are also in powerful decision-making positions in all areas of housework as well. What I want to see is integration of the field and not in the way Kaminsky suggests. Kaminsky is saying how the imbalance would compel men to join the field, but I actually think quite the opposite. If the stereotype of nursing being a women’s job is not challenged and actively discussed and dispelled, then I do not see men joining the field just in the fact that the field is imbalanced itself. In fact, I see men being more intimidated. Just watch the episode of Friends where Chandler makes fun of a male nurse that Monica decides to date by saying, "So, uhh, Dan. Nurse not a doctor, huh? Kind of girly, huh?" He finds the occupation emasculating.

Integration of the field should be a more active process and should be a goal because if wages are a source of inequality, then integrating the field with men would boost the pay up, like Kaminsky also speaks briefly about. Then, not only women are seen as constantly “complaining” about money.

However, I am not trying to denigrate the field of nursing because I agree wholeheartedly with Kaminsky that it is a field that is absolutely crucial to society and this is why this topic is so tricky. Women do have the potential to utilize their positions to promote good like Turner’s needle campaign. She envisioned a world where access to healthcare wasn’t contingent upon wealth or privilege, but had everything to do with it being a human right and created a program that was active in playing out this vision.

Another similarity between these three women is how they all were raised disadvantaged and with family histories of oppression. It is very interesting and inspiring to read about women who rose above their oppression and consequently devote their lives to helping others rise from the oppression.