Finding Our Voices in the Face of Dominant Discourse: A Closer Look at Gender Roles' Impact on Student Clinicians

LGBTQ Identity, Nursing Education, and Culturally Safe Care: Suggestions for Educators

“…"Gendered identities are constructed in ways that are both voluntary (i.e. making a choice to be a certain way) and [in a] coerced manner" [3]. Social pressures to behave or perform in a certain way are controlled by those in positions of dominant identities, most frequently the patriarchy.…”

Exposing Operations of Power in Supervisory Relationships

“…Emerging from historical and cultural conditions, discourses can be thought of as the “clusters of taken for granted assumptions” that underlie the many conversations occurring within any given social context (Winslade & Monk, , p. 29). Discourses are both informative and instructive—that is, they tell us “how things are in the world” (Crocket, , p. 499) and how we should interact with it (Zak‐Hunter et al., , p. 188).…”

“…Privileged discourses around professional status, gender, and race both reveal and advance power by specifying the “superiority” of some groups (e.g., supervisors, men, whites) and the “inferiority” of others (e.g., supervisees, women, persons of color). Unfortunately, these discourses move in and through us so stealthily that their influence in orchestrating relations often goes unnoticed (Crocket, , p. 500; Keeling, Butler, Green, Kraus, & Palit, ; p. 154; Zak‐Hunter et al., , p. 191–192). Nevertheless, such relations can manifest, for supervisees, a diminished sense of agency, and in the process, evoke doubt, worry, and a fear of speaking up.…”

“…Dominant discourses of gender both reveal and perpetuate the legacy of gender inequality through the specification of women as being different from, and also, less capable than men (Hare‐Mustin, , p. 11; Johnson, , p. 51; Zak‐Hunter et al., , p. 191). Although my supervisor's question made available a more empowered position, one in which I might “know something” and speak to what I know (Crocket, , p. 20), restraining factors attempted to pull me away.…”