‘Black Nurses in White’: Exploring Young Women's Entry into the Nursing Profession at Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, 1948–1980

Horwitz, Simonne

doi:10.1093/shm/hkl085

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Historically, the sole professional occupations available to educated black women during apartheid were nursing and teaching, and later, social work and police-work [4]. Professional status positioned nurses, especially registered nurses, at the "top of the social structure in the township community" [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The integration of occupational- and household-based chronic stress among South African women employed as public hospital nurses

Cohen

Venter

2020

PLoS ONE

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Background Nurses are a critical part of healthcare delivery systems, especially in under-resourced environments. Compared to other female-dominated professions in South Africa, nurses are securely employed and relatively well-paid. However, they are often drawn from complex, poor communities where they are responsible for many dependents and must accommodate community and family expectations of financial, health, and other forms of support. Aim The aim of the study was to explore public hospital-employed, black women nurses' lived experiences to better understand their stressors and consider interventions that may reduce psychological distress. Methods In 2015, we conducted semi-structured life history interviews with 71 nurses in Johannesburg. Using grounded theory and social network mapping, we trace complex, interrelated stressors and networks of familial dependency. Results Every participant experienced high levels of stress. Nurses described daily lives of chronic distress, with extreme pressures on their incomes, time, and resources. Much of the pressure on nurses comes from familial and partner dependency, both in absolute number of dependents and intensity, and related financial obligations and debt. Dependency is a function of social and cultural norms which assign women primary responsibility for unpaid work, yet nurses characterized their efforts as unsustainable and anxiety-inducing; their pay and paid work schedules made meeting that responsibility virtually impossible.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nurses were sought after wives both during and after apartheid, thought to be sophisticated and dignified and as having learned qualities needed in a wife and mother [4,6]. An interviewee in another study notes, "They say we are jackpots" [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The integration of occupational- and household-based chronic stress among South African women employed as public hospital nurses

Cohen

Venter

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Until fairly recently, nursing's links with domestic and care work made it one of the few professions open to South African women given the country's pervasively patriarchal culture. Although nursing has been generally devalued as feminised work, it did evolve during the second half of the twentieth century into a coveted middle class career for South African women from diverse backgrounds, by conferring relative status on local nurses in relation to many other South African women (Horwitz 2007;Marks 1997). By 1990, however, nursing internationally and locally faced enormous challenges due to the restructuring of healthcare systems, the adoption of new managerial practices, the changing socio-political expectations of healthcare provision, and the erosion of the profession's historic values (Marks 1997: 30).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourses and practices in institutionalised nursing in South Africa: Challenges for care

Joyner

Shefer

Smit

2014

South African Review of Sociology

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South African nursing remains a largely feminised and devalued profession, further undermined by the popular construction of nurses as indifferent and the healthcare systems as hindered by multiple challenges. Over the last 20 years of democracy, multiple efforts have been made at the level of policy, practice and knowledge production to address the challenges of the primary healthcare sector where nurses are such central role players. There are clearly resource challenges in South Africa which may undermine caring practices; however, this article also foregrounds the dominant discourses that shape international and local nursing, and which arguably mitigate against care that is democratic, socially responsive and sensitive to the diverse care needs of communities and individuals. Drawing on Tronto's political ethics of care and on Foucaultian frameworks, the paper analyses the processes currently shaping the experience of nurses and practices of care. Key themes are the hierarchical, regulatory framework of surveillance in nursing, the dominance of biomedical discourse and the mechanistic framework which fragments nursing practice. These aspects not only disempower nurses and deny them recognition but, together with institutional disregard for the need for self-care, also reproduce a system which is inherently unable to provide humane healthcare.

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“…we have written elsewhere about the education and challenges of black nurses in South Africa [4, 24]. What is important for the purposes of this paper is that by the mid-1950s, access of black nurses to a university education was becoming increasingly difficult.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Nurse in the University: A History of University Education for South African Nurses: A Case Study of the University of the Witwatersrand

Horwitz

2011

Nursing Research and Practice

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This paper charts the history and debates surrounding the introduction of academic, university-based training of nurses in South Africa. This was a process that was drawn out over five decades, beginning in the late 1930s. For nurses, university training was an important part of a process of professionalization; however, for other members of the medical community, nursing was seen as being linked to women's service work. Using the case-study of the University of the Witwatersrand, one of South Africa's premier universities and the place in the country to offer a university-based nursing program, we argue that an historical understanding of the ways in which nursing education was integrated into the university system tells us a great deal about the professionalization of nursing. This paper also recognises, for the first time, the pioneers of this important process.

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‘Black Nurses in White’: Exploring Young Women's Entry into the Nursing Profession at Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, 1948–1980

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

The integration of occupational- and household-based chronic stress among South African women employed as public hospital nurses

The integration of occupational- and household-based chronic stress among South African women employed as public hospital nurses

Discourses and practices in institutionalised nursing in South Africa: Challenges for care

The Nurse in the University: A History of University Education for South African Nurses: A Case Study of the University of the Witwatersrand

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