[Ideals in life and professional ethics: on the significance of the idea of a calling in the history of ideas of female care work].

The present article deals with the idea of nursing as a "calling" or "vocation" and its significance for the history of female care work. The female care profession developed during the period 1850-1920. This development is primarily associated with three educational institutions: the Ersta Deaconess institution, the Red Cross and Sophiahemmet. The perception of nursing as a calling underwent a transformation during the above-mentioned period, which is reflected in the profiles of the various institutions. This transformation can be traced from its origins in a Deaconess calling, wherein a deep religious faith and missionary activity were self-evident aspects of the calling, to a "nursing vocation", which begins to resemble a modern professional ethic and where faith in God is no longer considered mandatory. Insofar as one may speak of an "intensive period of development" in the history of this term, it can be localized in the years around the turn of the last century. It was at this point in time that the "calling" aspect was proclaimed with particular vigour, and not only by nurses but also other groups, primarily female professionals not belonging to the working class. However, the nursing profession was singular in its determination to be associated with the idea of a calling, and was also associated in the minds of outsiders as being intimately connected to that idea. In order to facilitate a broad understanding of this powerful emphasis of the nursing profession as a calling, particular attention must be paid to the nurses' own professionalization ambitions, the jealousy with which the medical corps guarded its own professional territory, the economic interests of employers and the culturally-inherited view of women and women's work. All of these factors contribute to the complexity of the term "calling" at the beginning of the twentieth century.