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hierarchies. Women have generally had a subordinate position at work, in the family, and in the
broader society for so long that they have little means to change things. Because the medical
discourse, with some hierarchical and structural arrangements, encompasses all possible experiences
in the health sector, and because “the dominant group creates norms and values for culture in its
own image,” those who are dominated are made to believe that they are inferior, and this in turn
results in low self‐esteem which triggers the feeling of powerlessness. 27
The armed forces have been an important employer of women nurses after the training period,
providing permanent full‐time employment. Though military nurses are essential to war, military
ideology sees women as irrelevant and thus marginalizes and devalues women’s experience. 28 In
those structures, “nurses’ contributions have often been totally excluded or, if acknowledged,
sentimentalized, or worse, trivialized.” 29 During my research in the Turkish context, I have seen
strong evidence of trivialization but no trace of sentimentalization or romanticization of the nursing
profession, aside from the analogy of nurses as angels which is relatively weak in Turkey. It seems
that nurses sometimes sentimentalize their tasks with patriotic and benevolent feelings, and this can
be interpreted as a strategy to rationalize the devotion expected of them, though it does not help
them much. Kristine Gebbie sees nurses as a “major part of the problem” and thinks they are
“unwilling to face reality and make the kind of dramatic shift required.” 30 However, for some groups,
that is not so easy, because even if they face reality, it is not so easy to challenge strong structural
forces – educational, patriarchal, medical, and militaristic hierarchies. Many nurses I interviewed
simply keep silent in the workplace, stranded between a rock and a hard place, obliged to either
maintain their silence or quit. As Donaghey et al. put it, “the silence from below is often
characterised as a survival strategy, where employees with low attachment to the organisation
‘mentally withdraw’ to cope with work’s more unpleasant aspects.” 31 It seems that silence is a
strategy to avoid conflict.
Many thanks to Diane Belle JAMES for her proofreading of this paper.
Keywords: Nursing, Inter‐professional stratification, Intra‐professional stratification, Work place
culture, Patriarchy
Associate Prof. Leyla Şimşek‐RATHKE
leilasimsek@gmail.com
Marmara University
Department of Sociology
Notes
1 Deniz Kandiyoti, “Emancipated but Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case,” Feminist
Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 320; idem, Cariyeler, Bacılar, Yurttaşlar: Kimlikler ve Toplumsal
Dönüşümler (İstanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1997), 7; Meltem Müftüler‐Bac, “Turkish Women’s
Predicament,” Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 3 (1999): 304.
2
Sara T. Fry, Rose M. Harvey, Ann C. Hurley, and Barbara Jo Foley, “Development of a Model of Moral
Distress in Military Nursing,” Nursing Ethics 9, no. 4 (2002): 377–85.
3 Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–1914 (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1988), 13; idem, “The Mysterious Demise of Sarah Gamp: The
Domiciliary Nurse and Her Detractors, c. 1830–1860,” Victorian Studies 32, no. 3 (1989): 366.
4
Deniz Kandiyoti, “Sex Roles and Social Change: A Comparative Appraisal of Turkey’s Women,”
Signs 3, no. 1 (1977): 63.
5
Kandiyoti, Cariyeler, Bacılar, Yurttaşlar, 57; Müftüler‐Bac, “Turkish Women’s Predicament,” 307.