ABSTRACT
Gynaecology is an area of health care that is essentially a woman’s world: women nursing women who are experiencing uniquely women’s ‘problems’. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing, that is, women in a women’s job carrying out women’s work (Porter 1992). It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women’s reproductive health or, more specifically, ‘the catastrophic disintegration’ of women’s sexual body (Martin 1990:75). Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ (Hughes 1958) nature of gynaecology gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’. Like many occupations, nursing work, women’s work and dirty work are inextricably linked due to an association with the private realm (Lawler 1991). This is never more clearly explicit than in gynaecology, due to its connection with the ‘failure and dissolution’ of women’s bodies (Martin 1990:75), especially the stigma associated with failed pregnancy (McQueen 1997). And, despite being acknowledged as a distinctive area of health care, gynaecology nursing remains a specialism without specialist status (Webb 1985). The ambiguous position of gynaecology in the ‘status hierarchy’ of health care, however, does not deter gynaecology nurses from declaring their work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills (McQueen 1997; Webb 1985).
