Inequality Regimes and Nurses' Power in Two Hospital Bureaucracies

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Abstract

In this research, 32 face-to-face interviews were conducted with nurses working in the emergency room and medical surgery units in two hospitals. The findings show that the assumptions that are embedded in bureaucratic structures that help us to understand how individuals in their positions experience their work also reveal how nurses challenge the structural limits to their power in their daily work experiences. With such an understanding, women who work as nurses will have the knowledge needed to reverse the trends of segregation entrenchment and continue to challenge the inequality regimes that limit their ability to garner the wages, power, and status that they deserve.

Author

• Marcia Marx, California State University, San Bernardino