Reading the guest editorial from volume 54, issue 4 of International Nursing Review which contains an article that I am reviewing for my final assignment, I discovered it contains some fascinating figures in relation to the value placed on women’s work. You’ll need Adobe Acrobat to read it. Here’s a snippet though:
Research on job satisfaction demonstrates that if working conditions
are satisfactory and relationships between colleagues in
the workplace are positive, the importance of salary diminishes.
Nurses cannot fail, however, to be dismayed when they read the
newspapers and find that hospital maintenance workers or toilet
cleaners are paid almost the same salaries as qualified nurses.
In Guildford, England, toilet cleaners were offered a salary of
£12,480 in 1998 while registered nurses (D-grade) earned just
£400 a year more (Kingma 2006).
Equal opportunity: poverty and women International Nursing Review 54 (4) , 303–305 doi:10.1111/j.1466-7657.2007.00616.x