Cover for Malka: Daring to Care: American Nursing and Second-Wave Feminism. Click for larger image

Daring to Care

American Nursing and Second-Wave Feminism

The role of feminism in transforming nursing and women's professional identity

Daring to Care examines the impact of second-wave feminism on the nursing field since the 1960s. In arguing that feminism helped to end nursing's subordination to medicine and provided nurses with greater autonomy and professional status, Susan Gelfand Malka 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, which is evident in nursing school curricula changes and the increase in self-directed and specialized roles available to twenty-first-century expert caregivers.

"Former pediatric nurse Malka writes from the point of view of both a nurse and a historian, providing a rich perspective on the timely issues addressed in the book. Highly recommended."--Choice

"A valuable addition to all levels of nursing and women's studies curricula. It makes the important connection between the evolution of nursing, and feminist thinking and activism."--Women's Review of Books

Daring to Care provides a fresh, valuable perspective on the history of women, feminism, nursing, medicine, and the professions; it should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of American nursing.”--The Journal of American History

"Malka's excellent scholarship fills a critical gap in recent history on the nursing profession, and will be useful to those interested in the history of feminism as well as women's, nursing, and medical history."--Susan M. Reverby, professor of women's studies, Wellesley College, and author of Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing

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

To order online:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/58bhd3bk9780252032479.html

To order by phone:
(800) 621-2736 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7000 (International)

Related Titles

previous book next book
History of the Present

Joan W.Scott, Andrew Aisenberg, Brian Connolly, Ben Kafka, Sylvia Schafer, & Mrinalini Sinha

Radical Teacher

Edited by Editorial Collective

Defining Deviance

Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960

Michael A. Rembis

Stolen Bases

Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball

Jennifer Ring

No Votes for Women

The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement

Susan Goodier

Pretty Good for a Girl

Women in Bluegrass

Murphy Hicks Henry

Exporting Perilous Pauline

Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze

Edited by Marina Dahlquist

Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age

Edited by Nilda Flores-González, Anna Romina Guevarra, Maura Toro-Morn, and Grace Chang

Feminist Teacher

Edited by Editorial Collective