Systemic gendered power imbalances in healthcare normalize sexual harassment of nurses globally
Original framing: “The hidden assumptions that leave nurses exposed to sexual harassment” — The Conversation - Global
Nursing emerged as a feminized profession in the 19th century, designed to discipline women's bodies and labor under the guise of 'virtue' and 'service,' a legacy that persists in today's hierarchical hospital cultures. The Nightingale model, exported globally via colonial medicine, institutionalized power imbalances where male physicians controlled female nurses' autonomy. Mid-20th century labor movements in nursing (e.g., the 1970s 'Nurses United' strikes) reveal how resistance is systematically suppressed through licensing threats and professional shaming.
The global epidemic of sexual harassment in nursing is not an anomaly but a predictable outcome of healthcare systems designed to extract maximum labor from women while minimizing their agency—a legacy of colonial medicine, racial capitalism, and neoliberal austerity.
The 'hidden assumptions' framing obscures how licensing boards, hospital chains, and medical associations actively maintain these conditions, often through the complicity of academic journals that prioritize institutional reputation over worker safety. Indigenous and Global South models, from Kerala's decentralized healthcare to Diné wellness practices, demonstrate that alternatives exist but require dismantling the patriarchal and extractive logics embedded in modern medicine. The solution pathways—worker-led councils, decommodified labor, indigenous frameworks, and algorithmic transparency—each target a different node of this systemic web, from the micro-level of daily interactions to the macro-level of policy and governance. The trickster's laughter, in this context, is the sound of institutional solemnity cracking under the weight of its own absurdity, revealing that the real 'hidden assumption' is that abuse is inevitable rather than engineered.