Gender, class and power: ideologies and conflict during the transition to trained female nursing at two New Zealand hospitals, 1889-95

Abstract

This paper examines the conflicts which surrounded the transition to trained female nursing in two New Zealand hospitals, Christchurch and Dunedin, in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It focuses on the ideological debates of the period which shaped the reformation of nursing within the colony in ways which differed from elsewhere. Arguments over gender and social class within nursing marked the transition period but were ultimately less important in defining nurses' future status than the role played by doctors. Trained female nursing became emeshed in a power struggle within hospitals from which doctors emerged victorious. Doctors were therefore able to dictate the role and functions of the new workforce and thus maintain their own supremacy within the hospital hierarchy.