Imperial Nursing: Cross-Cultural Challenges for Women in the Health Professions: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

This essay briefly examines some of the cross-cultural challenges that faced nurses in the Philippines, India, and South Africa in the context of 19th and 20th century imperialism. During this time, nurses from colonizing countries served as agents of empire by helping to establish and reinforce American and European control in colonized societies. In doing so, they sought to instill the racial and gender hierarchies of their home countries in the colonial territories. But once these women moved to the colonies, they frequently found their preconceptions about femininity, sexuality, and race challenged in unexpected ways. The history of nursing in the age of empire is a story of good intentions mixed with cultural chauvinism, of professional rigor mixed with condescension, of devotion and generosity shaped and often distorted by ideas of gendered and racial conventions, and of ambitious reform crushed by an inability to think beyond the bounds of imperialism.