Women Nurses and the Notion of Their “Empowerment”

Abstract

The major purpose of this study is to trace the historical dimensions of social and economic empowerment of women nurses in Keralam.  The historical process by which nursing emerged as a gendered profession and the nature of the specific image of the woman nurse as constituted in the culture of Keralam will also be examined.  The notion of empowerment is discussed at two levels.  The notion of a heightened level of well-being of women with the benefit of permanent salaried jobs is called into question. By doing this it seeks to address critically the connection between female empowerment and the preference of women for nursing so familiar in popular accounts of the ‘progressive Malayalee Women’ of ‘Progressive Kerala’.  The Malayalee woman nurse’s symbolic power or the level of her empowerment seems to be much smaller than that of other working women in comparable positions.  Symbolic power is based on symbolic capital.