“Worth a Dozen Men:” Dorothea Dix and the Gender Roles Women Experienced throughout the Civil War

Abstract

Dorothea Dix was tasked with creating regulations for women to follow if they wished to become nurses during the Civil War. The regulations that she created impacted the way that the nursing profession was formed. By allowing women to become nurses and give aid to fallen soldiers, they achieved a feeling of purpose and equality outside the home. This feeling of purpose can be read in the diaries and letters of Civil War nurses themselves through their descriptions of their own experiences. The sights that nurses witnessed during the Civil War while in hospitals and at the battlefields stuck with them. They saw the horrors of war first hand even though they were not on the front line of the battles themselves. These experiences that nurses dealt with can be compared as the equivalent to what a soldier who was fighting on the battlefield would have seen.