title: Health disparities, social injustice, and the culture of nursing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nurses are well positioned to challenge institutionalized social injustices that lead to health disparities.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this cross-cultural study was to collect stories of difference and fairness within nursing.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study used a life history methodology informed by feminist theory and critical social theory. Life story interviews were conducted with 26 women nurses of varying racial, cultural, sexual identity, and specialty backgrounds in the United States (n = 13) and Aotearoa New Zealand (n = 13). Participants reported having some understanding of social justice issues. They were asked to reflect on their experience of difference and fairness in their lives and specifically within nursing. Their stories were analyzed using a life history immersion method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nursing remains attached to the ideological construction of the "White good nurse." Taken-for-granted ideals privilege those who fit in and marginalize those who do not. The nurses experienced discrimination and unfairness, survived by living in two worlds, learned to live in contradiction, and worked surreptitiously for social justice.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  For nurses to contribute to changing the systems and structures that maintain health disparities, the privilege of not seeing difference and the processes of mainstream violence that support the construction of the "White good nurse" must be challenged. Nurses need skills to deconstruct the marginalizing social processes that sustain inequalities in nursing and healthcare. These hidden realities--racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination--will then be made visible and open to challenge.
authors.affiliation: Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. lynne.giddings@aut.ac.nz
authors.forename: Lynne S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Giddings
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009520:New Zealand; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology*; D011287:Prejudice; D012935:Social Justice / Q000523:psychology*