Femininity and feminist consciousness among Swedish healthcare workers
Focusing on the question of a “feminist consciousness” among female doctors, nurses, assistant nurses and physiotherapists, the aim of this paper is to explore patterns of class based practices and professional strategies within the context of care. The aim is to capture the complexity and tensions within discourses on gender equality in relation to different forms of (class based and racialised) femininity in the workplace, and among female professionals on different positions within healthcare. How do healthcare professionals on different positions within the hierarchy of the healthcare organization, who regard themselves as feminists, negotiate and sustain professional boundaries? Two examples can be deployed in order to highlight such tensions. First, in-depth interviews with female healthcare employees suggest that professionals higher up in the hierarchy distance themselves from what they see as traditional forms of femininity, represented by e.g. assistant nurses, especially women of colour. Another example is the Swedish nurses’ association (SSF, Svensk sjuksköterskeförening), who drew on a feminist discourse to protest against a government bill to allow assistant nurses to become nurses without having to go through full nurse training. According to the nurses’ association, the bill was “permeated with an old-fashioned view of women’s work and knowledge” because it did not value the theoretical aspects of the nursing profession.