The impact of gender perceptions and professional values on women’s careers in nursing

Abstract

Purpose -Within nursing, there appears to be two enduring sets of assumptions: firstly, that woman with children should prioritise the care of children; and secondly, that nursing standards require nurses to put their profession above other priorities. Commitment is linked to full-time working which contrasts sharply with the reality for many women with children who need to work part-time and are not able to change or extend working hours. Design/methodology/approach -This qualitative research involved the use of 32 in-depthinterviews with thirty-two female registered nurses with children and without children. They were employed in 'acute' nursing, aged between 25 to 60 years old and employed in registered grades 'D' to 'senior nurse manager'. They worked or had worked on a variety of employment conditions, some, but not all, had taken career breaks. The rationale for exclusively selecting women was based on the need to identify and describe organisational, situational, and individual factors related to women and the associations and barriers which affected their careers.Findings -In a female dominated profession, we find the profession resisting attempts to make the profession more accessible to women with young children. The career progression of women with children is inhibited and this is driven in part by a determination to maintain 'traditional' employment practices.Originality/value -This paper develops Heilman's argument that gender perceptions, by both males and females can be biased against women and these produce gender inequalities in employment. These findings are relevant across many areas of employment and they are significant in relation to broadening the debate around equal opportunities for women.Key words: Attitudes, barriers, careers, children, flexibility, gender stereotypes, nursing, professional values, working 2 IntroductionHistorically, nursing has been defined by the gender of its workforce and its professional values although there has been less attention on how these two factors inter-relate and impact on careers. There is evidence that this under-representation relates to child rearing (McIntosh et al. 2012); yet there is less known about the processes by which this situation is reproduced in an occupation numerically dominated by women. Here we focus on understanding how the relationship between professional values and gender stereotypes contribute to this process.Professional values control and validate nursing and are generated from a desire to produce as well as maintain professional standards of competency and efficiency. Conformity and confirmation are mechanisms by which the profession facilitates cohesiveness and cooperation is integral to the completion of nursing (Maben et al. 2007). Mannion et al. (2009) argue that this has resulted in nursing values becoming pre-eminent over the needs of the practitioners. They observed that the core professional values are commitment and the ability to work flexibly at the behest of the service. The nature of this relationship...

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