Misogyny in Nursing

[Ruby Vee]

[color=#111180]here's a small sample of statements i've read on allnurses.com:

[color=#111180]"the majority of nurses are women and women are catty individuals."

[color=#111180]"unfortunately, i don't think backstabbing is confined to nurses, but rather in the female gender."

[color=#111180]"women can be the most canniving(sp?) things on the face of the earth.

[color=#111180]i think it's just the hormone thing."

[color=#111180]"because women are such catty b*tches!!!!"

[color=#111180]"you are right that nursing is a female dominated field & females are the biggist back stabbers. a instructed told me this."

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]misogyny is defined as "the hatred, mistrust or dislike of women."

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]what i never realized until reading "allnurses.com" the past few years is how many women are misogynists.

[color=#111180]the first time i read a header like "why are nurses such backstabbers?" or a post that flatly stated "women are nasty, catty, backstabbers" i fully expected the poster to be jumped upon with both feet by every woman reading the post. when that didn't happen, it surprised, then disappointed, then dismayed me. when so many female posters jumped in to agree with these misogynistic statements, i was shocked and saddened. i am no longer shocked by how many members of this board appear to hate, mistrust or dislike women, but i continue to deplore the pheonomenon. and that so many of these misogynists are women themselves -- that i find even more deplorable. hypocritical and deplorable.

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]anyone defining an entire gender through a lens of hatred or mistrust is, at best, a bigot. a woman defining her entire gender this way is, unless she attributes these same negative stereotypes to herself, her sisters and her best friend is also a hypocrite.

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]how many of us these days would publicly refer to a person with black skin as "the 'n' word"? it's just not done. would you refer to your gay male cousin and his long-term partner as "a pair of ****"? probably not in polite company. yet women are called -- even in popular music -- names describing female dogs, names intimating that they earn their livings taking money for sex or names defining them by their genitalia.

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]if we feel so negatively toward an entire gender, how are we treating our female patients? i find it difficult to believe that someone can make a bald statement about how they hate working with women because they're all catty and backstabbing and then go out and treat their female patients with caring and respect. and if we're working so hard to respect races, cultures and religions other than our own, why are we not working equally hard to respect both genders?

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]the fact that so many nurses are women would have led me to believe that this is a female-friendly web site. instead, the opposite is true. never have i read the hatred and vitriol against women that i've read here, much of it spouted by other women who then go on to say "i can say that because i am female myself."

[color=#111180]

[color=#111180]well, honey, i'm so sorry for you. i'm sorry that you define an entire gender by negative stereotypes when i'm almost completely certain you don't define people of other races or cultures by similar standards. and i'm so very sorry that you hate yourself so much you define your entire gender that way. misogynists are sad, emotionally stunted people. female misogynists are worse.

[JWRN104]

Excellent points! We should not be stereotyping an entire gender based off some misguided nurses. Bad behavior cannot define nurses or women.

[imintrouble, BSN, RN]

I feel that it is very optimistic, but also naive, to think that women are completely similar to men. We just simply are not. As someone else mentioned, when men have problems, they will act out physically to assert dominance. Women do not do that. We get the upper hand in sneaky ways that usually do not include direct confrontation. This is also why the best way to deal with a woman who is being mean to you is to directly confront her and watch her shrink back.

I do not consider myself to be a misogynist, but a realist. High school was only 6 years ago for me and very clearly ingrained in my memory. Middle school goes a little further back, and it was worse. The boys would beat the crap out of each other and call each other out publicly to assert who was stronger. Once this hierarchy was established, it was accepted, and the boys would move on. The girls would talk about each other, demean each other, and form cliques to assert strength. Fights that may seem resolved would drag on and grudges lasted much, much longer. This is not a debate. It corresponds to every female's school experience that I have ever talked to about the subject.

My entire last semester of nursing school was ruined by a my female preceptor who threw me under the bus, acted catty toward me, and eventually lied about me to my nursing program's dean. It eventually led to my failure and having to retake the next semester. Everyone else working on the floor where I was precepting knew that I was a good student and took great care of my patients. I was continuously praised by other nurses and doctors, and even patients would request me over her when they knew I was student while she was the RN. She still succeeded in having me failed simply because she did not like me. What was her motivation? I have NO idea. But I feel strongly in my heart that part of it was fueled by jealousy. While I did my best to keep my personal life private, she did know that I was engaged, was getting my BSN, and there was the matter of all of the visible praise I received. Meanwhile, she was in a sexless relationship (that she constantly talked about) with a guy who wouldn't commit to her, she had her ADN, and she received patient complaints as well as coaching for her attitude during the time I worked with her.

I'm not so sure that it's a question of nature, but of nurture. Men are socialized to be better at teamwork and to deal with problems in the present. Women are different. We often are more emotional and more likely to take competition personally. Not every man and not every woman will be like this, but as a society? It's most definitely true.

I can't tell from your post if you're the misogynist, or the bad ole females who are just jealous.

Or maybe it's me for making that observation.

[blueyesue]

Some people are just immature jerks. I think it's pretty neck-n-neck with both genders as far as that goes. The immature jerks from both genders just sometimes act it out in different ways.

[decembergrad2011, BSN, RN]

i can't tell from your post if you're the misogynist, or the bad ole females who are just jealous.

...what? i don't have anything to be jealous of...

i don't have a problem with women in general, and i give everyone the benefit of the doubt until their actions prove otherwise. but i'm not going to pretend that the world is perfect. my experience is not unique in the least.

some people are just immature jerks. i think it's pretty neck-n-neck with both genders as far as that goes. the immature jerks from both genders just sometimes act it out in different ways.

i totally agree with this. but i also think that's kind of the point. i think it's much more difficult to decipher what a woman's motivations are and because of that, much easier for a woman to blindside another woman with hurtful behavior. i'm sure there are men out there that gossip and are two-faced, but it's my experience that it's more of a female-dominated trait.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

I must say when I read comments about why the nursing field is this or that, because women dominate the field I have chuckeld to myself! See, I worked in a factory of mostly men and let me tell you there were the men who gossiped, the men who back stabbed, the men who were jealous of the good looking men who dated the pretty women of the factory and spread some mean and nasty things about those men out of jealousy. There were men who cheated on their wives with the women at the factory, there were men who were genuinely nice peole who stayed out of all the crap and were decent to almost everyone. My whole point is, there was a heck of alot of drama in that factory of mostly men! so when I hear women say they rather work with mostly men, I just smile and think ha, been there done that...;-)

My husband works with all men. The ridiculous drama at his job puts anything I've ever seen at a hospital to shame.

Some people are ridiculous. That "some" isn't all women or all men.

[Kadambari]

It's sad to say but everything in your post is true about women. Denying that this isn't an issue doesn't solve the problem

[PennyWise]

I've seen the same thing, but in a different field. A cousin of mine was entering a new field (basically, she was administration, an office manager) and was telling me about how she handled different issues that had come up.

She said something that, at the time, seemed very odd to me: "I didn't befriend any of the women for a long time. I was very careful to figure out which ones could be trusted and which ones couldn't be. I still only talk to a few of them."

She held down the position for a long time too. She only recently left there for another job that was in a location she preferred. I always wondered how her misogyny-ish approach worked out for her but.........meh, she held the job down even during the recession so I guess something was going right. On the other hand, how accurate was her "figure out which ones could be trusted" radar? What happened when it was off? Guess I'll never know.

[Tragically Hip]

i haven't read the book; i have no opinion. about the movie . . . superficial describes it.

the movie wasn't superficial or not superficial, and i shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place. it was an over-the-top comedy whose core idea motivating ides was based on an idea from the book.

the queen bees book, though, was intended to be a self-help book for parents, to help their girls deal with being on the the receiving end of lateral violence from other girls. it's very common for adolescent girls to "eat their own" female classmates.

[tothepointeLVN, LVN]

I was continuously praised by other nurses and doctors, and even patients would request me over her when they knew I was student while she was the RN. She still succeeded in having me failed simply because she did not like me. What was her motivation? I have NO idea.

I have a pretty good idea. No your fault but you probably indirectly made her feel like the older crappier model. A yugo to your lexus. So she reacted in a way protective to her ego. Fair? Oh heck no. Common oh yeah.

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

My husband works with all men. The ridiculous drama at his job puts anything I've ever seen at a hospital to shame.Some people are ridiculous. That "some" isn't all women or all men.

This surprises me. It goes against all of my experience. Does he work in an office? I've never worked in a office in my life. But I've noticed that people who do tend to be more passive aggressive. Somehow the office environment encourages that kind of behavior.

So does nursing, I think. My old jobs had more "physical-aggressive" behavior. Every now and then a conflict would escalate to a shoving match or rarely a few punches. The boss would tell us to knock it out and cool off, and life would go on. If I got into aconflict like that as a nurse, I'd be fired in a heartbeat. On the other hand, a guy who is gossipy or dramatic on the construction site won't last long there.

I guess my point is, maybe it's just as much a socio-economic thing as it is a gender thing.

[Tragically Hip]

I guess my point is, maybe it's just as much a socio-economic thing as it is a gender thing.

i was thinking precisely that, but then I think about the politics among academics in university departments, and among medical school students.

[SummitRN, BSN, RN]

I think you have to be overly sensitive to interpret "I say women are catty" any way other than colloquial shorthand for "cattiness is a trend I observed among women I interact with" when posted by a female in a female dominated forum about a female dominated profession.

Projecting misogyny onto that writing style in the OP was quite the stretch... concocting that strawman led all the way to equivocation with racial prejudice. Hilarious!

Trends and observations aren't absolutes or infallible truth, but some people are insecure, overly proud, or otherwise sensitive. This thread is much ado about nothing.