Nursing's gender politics: reformulating the footnotes

Nursing's survival in the new millennium necessitates the application of a fresh lens to the manner in which nurses participate in and perpetuate the insidious nature of their oppression. This article critically explores the language and activities that annotate nursing's gender politics to expose how language and power intersect, facilitating the development of a language of social change. Self-deception is found to be a central organizing concept of professional and service delivery organizations that perpetuates professional mediocrity, limits freedom of thought and action, and preserves the borderline status of nurses. Dialogue inclusive of the internal and external systems operating to oppress nurses is suggested to transform nurses as collective social agents and reframe their sociopolitical reality.