Nursing Practice: Excluding the Voices of Internationally Educated Nurses Within a Caring and Gendered Profession

• In Event: Measuring, Enacting, and Persistence: Multinational Women Leaders' Agency

Abstract

Internationally educated nurses (IENs) play a vital role within Canada’s workforce. As a gendered profession, nursing reflects the values of Canada’s multiculturalism policies by integrating feminist ethics of care as a way of advocating for equality. However, IENs of colour expose a contrasting experience within the working environment. Instead, they describe how colonial practices function through the ideal type nurse, who is described as white, middleclass and occupies leadership spaces. Gender, feminism and the theory of care work to obscure racial tension that IENs experience. We interviewed 10 IENs of colour, using an antiracist feminist framework. The study revealed daily challenges the participants faced and how racism was organized through everyday interactions, guidelines and policies that claimed to support equality.

Author

• Nadia M. Prendergast, University of Toronto