This text is part of a dialogue betwween the authorserlating to two reaearch projects: one on "The professional ambiguities, work cinditions and the citizenship of nurses - a comparative study in the Federal District and São Paulo"and the other on "The impact of work conditions on the nurses in the Hospital São Paulo as to sexual and reproductive life". Nursing occupies a singular place in the health professions. Is is differentiated by numeric importance as well as by a professional practice which is almost exclusively feminine. Culturally, to care is attributed as a woman's task (nurse, mother teacher, social worker, etc.); to treat is a man's task (doctor, father, provider, etc.) The dichotomy between caring and treating deines other confkicts, erlations of power, and of hiearchies established in the professional practivce of nursing. These conflicts may be associated with: a) the founding myth of the origin of nursing, generator of a morality and a competence which condition htis professional practice; b) feminility, mothering, the administration of intimacy and body care, that is, the social representations of nursingwith respect to gender; c) the androcentric character of power relations and those of sexuality which subsume the professional space of nursing.
Gender; Identity; Nursing; Power