Femininity And Economic Factors: Chapter Analysis

Chapter Comparison on Femininity and Economic Factors Chapter 4 and 5 of the McPherson text focus on the third generation of nurses which occurred from 1920-1942. Chapter 5 provides better information on nursing in this inter-war era for the reasons of well-rounded observations, stylistic flow, and area of focus. While both of these chapters focus on different issues during this era, and chapter 5 goes on to discuss 1942-1968, chapter 5 presents the information in a clearer manner.
Observations
Chapter 5 focuses on the societal factors of nursing practice at this time, whereas chapter 4 focuses on the logistical element of nursing. These societal factors include femininity, sexuality, and society’s view of nurses. The logistical elements

This is probably due to Canadian writers supporting the traditional nursing persona, unlike American commentary (McPherson, 2003). Some interesting negative commentary is the of Leslie Bell, who wrote that in order for nurses to better help patients with sexual problems it was necessary for nurses to have, “a more open and frank approach to discussing sexuality” (McPherson, 2003, Chapter 5, Section 3, para. 3). This was a reflection of society's view of a sexually liberated woman, which nursing did not present. Another compelling critique is that of Dr. Atlee who criticized the nurses uniform as it was not up to the modern era’s standards. Businesses such as Eatons department store wanted to capitalize on this a presented nurses with much more modern while still modest uniform options post-graduation. Some organizations took societies opinion more seriously though, and adopted modern uniforms. An example of this in the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) whose dropped waistlines and cloche hats were quite different for the Victorian domestic servant uniforms which were the norm (McPherson,

Chapter 5 seems to use words that make a simple sentence sound confusion. An example of this is the introduction to the chapter which states, “Throughout the economic and political dislocation of the inter-war years…” (McPherson, 2003, Chapter 5, Section 1, para. 1). The use of the word ‘dislocation’ makes the sentence confusing to understand and perhaps the use of a different word may make it easier to comprehend. After this initial section though, the stylistic flow of the chapter was easy to understand and was interesting to read (McPherson, 2003). Chapter 4 focused on numerical data which while important caused the flow to seem choppy An example of this is when discussing female work-force distribution it states, “compared to other women workers, a much higher concentration of nurses, 42 percent, were ages 25 to 34” (McPherson, 2003, Chapter 4, Section 2, para. 3). This is just one part of the paragraph which discusses this content. It is important to analyze the numerical data, but having it concentrated in this one chapter make it difficult to read in full. As such, the stylistic flow of chapter 5 is easier to understand than chapter 4 (McPherson,