Faith A. Tissot, MSN, CCRN
For as long as I can remember, Gloria Steinem has been a bold, courageous voice for women and equality. I watched her marches, speeches, and calls to action on television, which in the early 1970s needed to warm up before it showed an image and had only six channels to choose from.
Steinem’s feminist philosophy challenged assumptions about women, power, authority, and the structures that shaped women’s lives. Her work invited individuals to look beyond what had been normalized and ask a significant yet simple question: Why? Or, in some cases, why not?
One of feminism’s most important contributions to nursing is this same courage to question the structures, assumptions, and hierarchies that determine whose knowledge is valued and whose voices are heard. What began as a challenge to social norms also offers nursing a way to examine its own traditions, authority structures, and ways of knowing.
Dr. Peggy Chinn is the Gloria Steinem of nursing.
I have had the distinct privilege of knowing Dr. Chinn as a PhD student, a colleague, and now a friend. Her influence extends far beyond her scholarship and contributions to nursing. She is generous with her time, sharing knowledge with those who seek it and offering wisdom and advice to those who ask. She is a titan in our profession, humble and kindhearted, but above all, brave.
Like Steinem, Chinn challenges us to question the status quo and encourages nurses to consider where knowledge comes from, who creates it, whose experiences shape it, and how to transform systems that marginalize certain ways of knowing (Chinn, 2022). Her work guides nursing educators and scholars to see knowledge not as handed down by gatekeepers, but as something to continually examine, challenge, and develop.
This feminist perspective recognizes that knowledge and power are intertwined. Who is seen as an expert, whose experiences are credible, and whose perspectives are overlooked? These questions reveal how knowledge is produced and how assumptions and systems perpetuate inequity.
What changes when we stop labeling a patient “difficult” and explore why they behave a certain way?
Will we call a nurse “causing trouble” for challenging unsafe practices, or recognize the leadership it takes to oppose unethical conduct?
When a patient’s experience doesn’t fit a clinical category, do we dismiss what we can’t measure—or ask what they can teach us?
These questions challenge assumptions shaping nursing practice, education, research, and knowledge production. Here, nursing and feminism meet powerfully: both question what seems inevitable.
Peggy Chinn has modeled questioning throughout her career. Her scholarship reminds us that challenging assumptions is a commitment to our discipline’s past, present, and future. Nursing theory, after all, helps us articulate why we believe and practice what we do. Nursing is not simply a collection of tasks. It is a discipline that generates knowledge, examines its own assumptions, and transforms the conditions in which people live and receive care.
Yet questioning requires more than individual courage and spaces where people can explore, challenge, and reconsider ideas without dehumanizing those with different perspectives (Chinn, 2015). What possibilities emerge when we examine nursing through a holistic lens and recognize forms of knowledge and experience that have historically been overlooked?
Nursology.net stands out for encouraging dialogue, critical inquiry, and the exchange of ideas. It questions assumptions and hierarchies, whose voices are missing from the conversation, and challenges one another with respect, curiosity, and openness to learning from different perspectives.
Perhaps feminism’s contribution to nursing is not simply using our stronger voice. It also helped us recognize the importance of examining our discipline itself. What we value, who has been silenced, and taking steps to ensure those voices are heard.
The greatest courage of all is to ask a question without knowing where the answer will lead. A willingness to remain alert, to keep thinking, and to resist the temptation to declare the conversation finished.
I wonder what Gloria Steinem might ask of nursing today. Perhaps she would not need to provide us with an answer. Perhaps she would simply remind us to keep asking why.
Within nursing, Dr. Chinn has given that question a home, a theory and a philosophy.
Her feminism is not incidental to her nursing scholarship; it is foundational to her vision of nursing as a discipline that challenges traditional power structures, values diverse ways of knowing, and advances social justice. Like Gloria Steinem, Chinn understood that meaningful change requires more than advocating for women. It commands bravery, unwavering commitment, and a community willing to question the systems that determine whose voices, knowledge, and experiences are valued.
The courage to question is not the opposite of knowing. It is how knowing evolves and continues to flourish.
References
Chinn, P. L., & Falk-Rafael, A. (2015). Peace and power: a theory of emancipatory group process: Peace and power. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 47(1), 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12101
Chinn P. L. (2022). Decolonizing nursing knowledge. Nursing Philosophy: An international journal for healthcare professionals, 23(4), e12410. https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12410