1910's Medicine and Health | "Nursing as a Profession for College Women"

Journal article

By: Edna L. Foley

Date: May 1910

Source: Foley, Edna L. "Nursing as a Profession for College Women." American Journal of Nursing, 10, no. 8, May 1910, 533, 534, 535, 536.

About the Author: Edna L. Foley, who received her bachelor's degree at Smith College in 1901, was the supervising nurse at the Chicago Tuberculosis Institute.

Introduction

Alongside traditional occupational categories such as "white collar" or "blue collar," historians and sociologists are increasingly identifying the so-called pink collar occupational realm that features female-dominated jobs that are accorded low pay and little social status. This was clearly the case with nursing, perhaps the most "pink collar" career field of all. Centuries of staffing largely with nuns and community volunteers had served to render nursing a lowly, chronically underappreciated line of...