Nightingale's Legacy: Women on the COVID 'Frontline' - Hannah West

We are pleased that the DRN's Chair, Hannah West, has had her blog published in the Kings Defence in Depth blog.

Coronavirus is not only a disease but a human security threat. We are used to seeing the, predominantly male, Armed Forces deploy in response to a conventional security threat. But, the NHS frontline is disproportionately manned by women. Nurses symbolise the frontline of the medical profession in their hands-on capacity caring for patients and whilst not all nurses responding to the pandemic are women, it remains the case that in the public consciousness, the stereotype of a nurse is a woman. The accepted presence of women nurses on the coronavirus frontline, ignores the unprecedented feminised response to this security threat. This post asks how women’s labour on the coronavirus frontline will be captured in the historical record.

Read the full blog post.