Sisterhood, cups of tea and screwing over other women

[brightlywoven]

foreverdirt has written most excellently about the ways that sexism and patriarchy still screw over women, and teach them that if they're going to be in a traditionally male field, they had damn well better be the best, or incur all kinds of flaming wrath and guilt.

Pondering this, I can't help but wonder why it is that women make these situations harder for each other.

As a bright-eyed medical student, I guffawed when a consultant told me that nurses would never treat me the same as they would treat my male colleagues. She muttered something about jealously. Now, I always thought it very insulting to imply that nurses were only nurses because they couldn't be doctors; that because it's traditionally 'women's work' doesn't make nursing less desirable, interesting or worthy.

Then I entered the workforce, and I noticed how many times I would be given a helping hand, or offered a cup of tea etc, and compared that to the treatment my male colleagues get and there *is* a difference.



Observation 1: if I ask a nurse to do something for me, it's usually because it is her job and not mine. There are cases where I'm not qualified to do the task (like some dressings). But if that job involves something messy, or is tedious, the implication received is that I'm above that task, and the response is usually grudging at best.
Put it this way, if I ask a nurse to something outside her job description, like place a drip, she would be entitled to say 'I don't do drips'.
But if I said the patient needed a new nappy, and she needed to do it 'because I don't change nappies', I would be lucky if the dirty one wasn't thrown in my face.
But why should I do somebody else's job, because they will perceive it as insulting if I ask them to do if for themselves?

Observation 2: the more specialised the nurse, the less this is an issue. In ICU, in emergency departments, there is acknowledgment of respective expertise. The less expert the nursing group, the more antagonism I have found to (chiefly) the female doctors - from intern to consultant.

Since starting work in the UK, the following things have happened:
- The nurse unit manager complained to a registrar about the apparel of a female house officer, then complained to the consultant about the apparel of the house officer and the registrar. The complaint? Visible arms. Another complaint? Visible cleavage.
- The next day she stuck up a copy of the dress code in our office, highlighted.
- My notes, containing all my jobs lists and important info, which I left unguarded while I rushed an important blood sample to the lab to process it, were taken and put in a locked office. I wasted forty-five minutes traipsing up and down the hospital looking for these. When, in desperation I asked the nurse if she had seen them, she unlocked the office, gave them to me *with not a word of apology or explanation*.
- The same thing happened to my colleague the following day. Again, she got no explanation.
- It has never happened to my male colleagues.

There is a group of the nursing staff who are rude, abrupt and demanding to a group of the doctors. And our male colleagues are deliberately blind to this, in a 'this is your problem ladies' kind of a way.

It irritates me to have to tip-toe around people in this way. More than that though, it irritates me philosophically to have to say either
1/ Women have a tendency to be nasty to each other
OR
2/ Women in traditionally female roles are jealous of those in traditionally male roles.

Does anyone have insight into this phenomenon? Is it the same in other fields, or is the hierarchy of medicine particularly irritant to the glands, or something.