Abstract

PIRES, Ana Maria Barros. The “Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas” and nursing profession in the XXth century: readings in the feminist press. Rev. Enf. Ref. [online]. 2012, vol.serIII, n.8, pp.171-178. ISSN 0874-0283.  https://doi.org/10.12707/RIII12HM3.

Representations that society associates with nurses and nursing, some of them contradictory, persist in individual and collective imaginations. This is not consistent with the development of nursing in terms of professional practice, education and scholarship. Images we associate with nurses and nursing are engraved in the memory from the more or less remote past and may have historical, social and cultural justifications. Revealing how social representations associated with nurses and nursing have been formed in the past can help us today to re-create the construction of our professional identity and elucidate how we as a social group produce, use, share and take on images that define our own identity. Our aim is to reveal how Portuguese feminist movements at the beginning of XXth century, namely the Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas (LRMP), has created a positive image of nursing, revealing a praiseworthy discourse attracting the interest of women in a “dignified profession” that could allow them economic independence in cases of abandonment or widowhood. We will use a set of newspaper articles published by the official press of LRMP - “A Mulher e a Criança”, and “A Madrugada” - since the printing press was an important way to reveal and spread feminist ideals.

Keywords : feminism; history of nursing.

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