The impact of intersectionality on the empowerment and development of nurses into leadership roles

Abstract

Background: Empowering nurses to be leaders at every health organisational level is essential for the future of quality health care. Nurses are a predominantly female, globally transient, diverse professional group, with over a quarter of New Zealand’s nursing workforce coming from overseas. Despite this diversity, the impact of the intersection of socially constructed identities such as race, gender, and class, on empowerment and a nurses' ability to develop as a leader was previously unresearched. Aim: This study aimed to learn how to create a culture of nursing leadership by explaining the impact of intersectionality on the empowerment and development of nurses into leadership roles. Methods: The study has a transformative worldview and is unique in its combination of intersectionality and critical realism for studying nursing leadership. The mixed methods explanatory sequential research design contains two phases. For Phase One, I used an online questionnaire (n=167) to ascertain nurses' and nurse managers' structural and psychological empowerment levels. Phase Two consisted of thirty-one semi-structured interviews with nurses and managers, analysed using an intersectional framework. Findings: A Spearman’s rank-order correlation indicated a significant positive relationship between structural and individual psychological empowerment. The quantitative findings indicated moderately empowered nurses. However, qualitative findings revealed that not all nurses are equally empowered. The intersection of gender, race, and class, privileges European male then female nurses, while non- European internationally educated nurses of either gender face disadvantage. Conclusions: Health organisations need to adopt an intersectional approach to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion policies if they are to address implicit bias and racism in the workforce. The impact of intersecting social identities within patriarchal, colonial, racist, and sexist structures, create barriers to career progression, empowerment, and leadership for nurses. Future research on nursing leadership should include intersectionality to discover how multiple intersecting social categories may empower or impede a nurse’s ability to be a leader.