[Misogyny in the nursing world? A historical overview]

Through history, there have been men and women who have cared for injured warriors, attended to expectant mothers, cared for those most unprotected or attended to the health of children and sick older people. This is a fact which the History of Nursing does not ignore. Nonetheless, it is no less certain that since their origins, surgical practices and therapeutic specialties in the hands of men have enjoyed an enormous social recognition while those treatment practices and care tasks which have women as their main protagonists frequently fall into a forgotten and silent place. Now the question is to what is due such an asymmetric and sexual evaluation of these tasks? How are these differences among men and women and among doctors and nurses expressed and explained? Basically these are viewed through a dense network of images, symbols and social stereotypes which codify their behaviors, regulate their activities, prescribe their expectations and construct their tastes. All this is a subtle, polymorphic strategy for androcentric normalization of feminine reality which, as is to be expected, does not escape being designated as specific roles for female caretakers either. The authors examine the Florence Nightingale model to ascertain whether or not this model is capable to overcome, eliminate or transform some of the androcentric patterns described in the previous article or, to the contrary, whether or not these patterns still persevere and are transmitted to present day, even though only in a deceptive manner.