University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Both a College Woman and a Professional Nurse: College Educated Women who Became Professional Nurses, 1890-1920 Katharine Therese Smith University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons, Nursing Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Katharine Therese, "Both a College Woman and a Professional Nurse: College Educated Women who Became Professional Nurses, 1890-1920" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1139. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1139 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1139 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Both a College Woman and a Professional Nurse: College Educated Women who Became Professional Nurses, 1890-1920 Abstract Within the context of the rapidly changing society of Progressive Era America, educated women were looking for new occupations which would allow them to exercise their skills as independent thinkers, autonomous workers and group leaders. In such a search, some women found their way to professional nursing and entered hospital-based nurse training programs after their college graduations. This study is a history of these college women who became professional nurses between 1890 and 1920 - a period when both institutions for womenâ??s higher education and professional nurse training were at a transition point. Historians of womenâ??s higher education and historians of nursing alike have yet to focus on this population in their analyses of educated and professional women. However questions about what professional nursing had to offer college women elucidate in new ways the meaning of work to women, female empowerment and the unique opportunities afforded to women through higher education and professional nursing.