booktheque

Divided sisterhood

Shula Marks · 1994

Where to buy

Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.

View on Amazon

This is an affiliate link: if you buy through it, the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps us bring quality content and maintain the site. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

About the book

There are about 150,000 nurses in South Africa today, two-thirds of them black, and it is widely recognised that they will be crucial to any future health service. Yet the profession suffers from 'a major crisis of identity', divided between black and white, junior and senior, hospital- and university-trained. This book explores the establishment of nursing as a profession for white, English-speaking 'ladies' in the last third of the nineteenth century, the class and racial tensions that developed as first Afrikaner and then African, Indian and Coloured women were drawn into its ranks, and the way in which processes of professionalisation further divided nurses. The book provides a powerful metaphor for South African society. At its heart lies the tension between the universalist ethos of the healing professions and racial fears around images of white (female) hands on black (male) bodies - and black (female) hands on white (male) bodies.

Book details

Year
1994
Language
English
Publisher
Springer Nature
Editions
3
Pages
2240
ISBN
9781349236039

Data source: Wikidata

More by Shula Marks