Finding Common Ground: Civil War Nurses Transforming Gender Roles

Institution

Eastern Kentucky University

Abstract

Despite the nineteenth-century insistence on "separate spheres" for men and women, Union nurses during the American Civil War found "common ground" with soldiers. These women used domesticity to enter the public, professional life of hospitals and even the battlefield itself, thereby contributing to expanded opportunities for women after the war.

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Finding Common Ground: Civil War Nurses Transforming Gender Roles

Despite the nineteenth-century insistence on "separate spheres" for men and women, Union nurses during the American Civil War found "common ground" with soldiers. These women used domesticity to enter the public, professional life of hospitals and even the battlefield itself, thereby contributing to expanded opportunities for women after the war.