Thursday, 24 July 2014

Gender models role models and cognitive models... Discuss?

As a male nurse I have been aware of gender throughout my career ever since my student days (late 1970s-early 80s) - mental health - and then as a student again for two years general nurse training. The cultural, professional and global changes over the past three decades and more have been quite profound all influencing the perspectives and realities of gender in nursing today.

Since 1987-88, when I discovered Hodges' model I was also bound to wonder about gender in terms of:
  • the number of male nurse theorists and their contribution (should this matter!)?; 
  • other male nurse theorists globally and the influence of other cultural perspectives;
  • the need to consider gender of course in terms of 'standpoint' within research;
  • Is Hodges' model gender biased as its structure and basis comprised of categories of care concepts is a very masculine activity? (Even though the intention in identifying the boxes is to transcend and integrate them.) Please see below (and no pun intended).
    • Therefore nursing (still primarily a female profession) may ignore/discredit the potential of the model?
Possibly, the stand-out feature of Hodges' model is its invitation to categorise and typify. There could be gender-based consequences in how the model is perceived and received, which in turn could affect interest and participation in research on this subject? In designing studies of the model the feminist standpoint might be useful?:
“What, then, about the further charge that making clear-cut classifications of this kind is a very masculine thing to do? … It reaches its peak in empirical science as we know it, itself a very male affair, and it embodies the desire to have control of things and to know what is likely to happen. It issues in the kind of binary opposites we have found feminists, especially postmodernist feminists, decrying so vigorously-antimonies such as thought/language, nature/culture, reason/emotion, theory/practice, white/black, and especially men/women.” Crotty, (1998) p.171.

Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. SAGE Publications Ltd.

This post was prompted by an item on GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery)

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