Journal Special Issues
Advances in Contemporary Nursing and Gender
By Paula McGee, Kim Walker
Overview
Guest Editors
Professor Paula McGee
Faculty of Health, Birmingham City University, Birmingham UK
and
Professor Kim Walker
University of Technology, Sydney; University of Tasmania and St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney NSW, Australia
Advances in Contemporary Nursing and Gender, explores some of the issues surrounding gender differences, both in patient care and within the nursing profession.
This special issue provides valuable examples of the marked differences in the ways in which men and women experience their health and the extent to which services meet their particular needs, reflecting the social construction of gender roles: each society's ideas about how men and women should behave, their rights and responsibilities, their status and the exercise of power.
This issue also explores how gender inequalities within the nursing profession raise multiple challenges for nurses and will be perpetuated, particularly in situations in which power and decision making are concentrated in one gender.
The International Council of Nurses (2009a, 2009b) has made clear that it regards gender as an important issue for nursing care. The research contained in this special issue is of paramount importance, especially in light of the fact that ‘nursing and midwifery personnel constitute the largest component of the health workforce and deliver, or supervise, most of the health services provided worldwide' (WHO 2000).
This important issue is vital reading for all health workers, but particularly nursing staff, whose close involvement with patients, places them in the unique position to ensure that women's and men's needs are articulated (ICN 2009a).
Advances in Contemporary Nursing and Gender seeks to address the shortfall in research on this subject, and strives to bring understanding to the way in which gender is culturally and socially constructed, so that health workers and legislators might appreciate the implications of health policies, legislation and planning for women and men. Legislators involved with health policy planning should also make this an essential read.
This collection of papers is helpful and thought provoking for all stakeholders in the health care profession, but most importantly, this issue aims to help inform and equip nurses in their continued efforts to provide healthcare for men and women.
These issues are of vital importance and, in the context of a shortfall of such information, this special issue should not be missed.
Published: 2009
ISBN:
978-1-921348-07-5
Pages: ii+94
Imprint:
eContent Management
This book is available as a pdf from eBooks.
