witches midwives and nurses a history of female healers

The gendering of healing and curing was read loud and clear in the nursing curriculums we were taught in nursing school, in written nursing policies and practices at work, and in professional and social interactions at hospitals. I never understood how measuring a full person as half of anyone else could be seen as a compliment. After years of studying the science of nursing, a nurse is summed up as either an “angel of mercy” or “half a doctor” the latter said in all seriousness as the mountaintop of all compliments. It’s not a coincidence that these gendered terms are used to describe our work, and that the work of nurses is undervalued and exploited, just as housework is. Formal nursing education is based on the very same medical rationale as physicians’ formal education, yet somehow this knowledge is wrapped in pretty pink packaging called a ‘nursing care-plan’ – reducing the rigorous medical science behind nursing to a sentiment that naturally all women have (irony). It was in Ehrenreich and English’s Witches Midwives and Nurses: a History of Women Healers that I first read this gendered glance at healing and curing, but it wasn’t the first time I had seen or experienced it.

Where underpaid and exploited migrant domestic workers spend their youth and adulthood looking after a family that isn’t even theirs, far away from their own. Fathers, or father figures, continue to tell their young daughters that they’re so glad to have had girls because in their old age, daughters will be by their side, while sons are unreliable (read not obliged). Where unmarried daughters, “spinsters”, and widows are expected to fulfill their unlived destinies by caring for the family’s sick and elderly. Feminized work may just as well be defined as work that is unappreciated, assured, expected, and taken for granted. The kind that everything depends on to exist, that very little thanks is given to, very few see, and barely any of its time and energy is compensated. Cleaning and nesting are the processes that give home and an environment of wellness. Asking is the process that makes one feel understood. Listening is the process that makes one feel heard. Cooking is the process that brings upon eats.

And for as long as I can remember, women around me and far away from me, have been invested in processes trusting that only sound, patient and protected processes yield desired outcomes.

Witches midwives and nurses a history of female healers