Ellen Kuhlmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 279830 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Kuhlmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Kuhlmann |
| SIGNATURE | KUHLMANN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bremen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7337-114X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 119 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 9 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Community health workers
BACKGROUND: Interest in community health workers (CHWs) and the benefits for health systems are growing globally, but research is focused on low- and middle-income countries and high-income Anglo-American countries. OBJECTIVE: This comparative assessment focuses on community health systems and health and care workers as advocates and boundary spanners, aiming to connect global evidence to high-income European countries and assessing the capacitie…
Health security needs a European health and care workforce strategy, and it needs it now
Europe is currently facing novel security threats in many different areas, reinforcing the need for a well prepared and protected health and care workforce to ensure health system resilience and service provision for the population under conditions of a poly-crisis. However, the health and care workforce is weakened by persisting shortages, competency gaps and mismatches, and poor working and mental health conditions. Health and care workers are …
Global health and care worker migration requires a global response
The global migration of the health and care workforce (HCWF) has intensified, leading to complex policy scenarios and diverse migration patterns. While the traditional narrative of individual health and care workers (HCWs) migrating from low- and middle-income countries to high-income countries in search of higher income, career prospects and working conditions remains relevant, it now coexists with many other drivers, incentives, and dynamics at…
Post-Covid health policy responses to healthcare workforce capacities
A cross countries in Europe, health policy is seeking to adapt to the post-pandemic 'permacrisis', where high demands on the healthcare workforce and shortages continue and combine with climate change, and war. The success of these efforts depends on the capacities of the healthcare workforce. This study aims to compare health policy responses to strengthen the capacities of the healthcare workforce and to explore the underpinning dynamics betwee…
Varieties of governance versatility and institutions
Research on governance often assumes that governance requires combinations of hierarchical, market and network co-ordination. However, governance versatility – understood as the existence of a repertoire of different modes of coordination – is not a characteristic of all instances of governance. The aim of this paper is to offer a more thorough analysis by exploring existing levels of governance versatility and how these are influenced by institu…
Violence against healthcare workers in the middle of a global health crisis
Introduction: Violence against healthcare workers is a global health problem threatening healthcare workforce retention and health system resilience in a fragile post-COVID 'normalisation' period. In this perspective article, we argue that violence against healthcare workers must be made a greater priority. Our novel contribution to the debate is a comparative health system and policy approach. Methods: We have chosen a most different systems com…
SDG5 “Gender Equality” and the Covid-19 pandemic
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare and societies, exacerbating existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere. Our study explores health system responses to gender equality goals during the COVID-19 pandemic and inclusion in future policies. Methods: We apply a qualitative comparative approach, drawing on secondary sources and expert information; the data was collected from March-July 2022. Australia, Brazil, …
Migrant healthcare workers during Covid-19
Introduction: Migrant healthcare workers played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic, but data are lacking especially for high-resourced European healthcare systems. This study aims to research migrant healthcare workers through an intersectional health system-related approach, using Germany as a case study. Methods: An intersectional research framework was created and a rapid scoping study performed. Secondary analysis of selected item…
Comparing Health Workforce Policy during a Major Global Health Crisis
Comparative health workforce policy research may contribute new knowledge to improve health system resilience and population health during a crisis
Healthcare Workers' Perceptions and Medically Approved Covid-19 Infection Risk
Introduction This study analyses how healthcare workers (HCWs) perceived risks, protection and preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to medically approved risks and organizational measures. The aim is to explore “blind spots” of pandemic protection and make mental health needs of HCWs visible. Methods We have chosen an “optimal-case” scenario of a high-income country with a well-resourced hospital sector and low HCW infecti…
New public management, physicians and populism
Recent debates on the rise of right-wing or neoliberal populism globally have prompted public health and health systems researchers to explore its implications in the healthcare systems. This case study of Turkey's recent health reform initiative, the Health Transformation Program, aims to contribute to this debate by examining the nexus among populism, professionalism and the contemporary market and managerial reforms, often described as New Pub…
Profession und Geschlechterdifferenz
Profession und Geschlechterdifferenz
Sociology of Professions
The transformations of many societies into service economies have created a new importance of the sociology of professions across the globe. Yet the contemporary developments call for a critical revision of existing theoretical approaches for two reasons: first, the neoliberal turn in the western world has fundamentally changed the concepts of welfare state and the governance of professions, and the economic breakdown has furthermore fuelled the …
Mainstreaming gender into healthcare
Across the globe the concept of gender mainstreaming is indicative of substantive transformations, and healthcare is a particularly important policy arena. Yet existing research reveals only modest success in the implementation of gender policies in national healthcare systems, despite the availability of complex tools and guidelines. This article introduces an approach that links gender mainstreaming with approaches into policy transfer as dynam…
Researching transformations in healthcare services and policy in international perspective
Across countries healthcare systems face new pressures for change towards more cost-effective and sustainable health services for all citizens. In recent years health policy-makers have responded to these challenges mainly by introducing or reinforcing market mechanisms and by expanding managerial controls. This is leading to major transformations in health policy and, subsequently, to the organization and delivery of healthcare services. This co…
Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine
Professional Governance and Public Control
Governments across the western world face new demands to achieve greater efficiency and responsiveness in public services. The transformations are most radical and challenging in healthcare where both cost effectiveness and patient safety are major issues. Drawing on the National Health Service in the UK and the corporatist system in Germany, this article compares the dynamics of changing governance and public control in the context of different …
From Women's Health to Gender Mainstreaming and Back Again
This article links experience from the women's health movement to gender mainstreaming approaches and feminist agendas. The aim is to assess the options and limitations of gender mainstreaming and the links with changing governance in healthcare in western countries. From the late 1960s, the women's health movement was a forerunner of today's commonplaces of successful models of health reform. Women significantly advanced new policy approaches on…
The ‘Healthcare State’ in Transition
The building of a European nation challenges entrenched ties between the state and the professions. Yet, in relation to healthcare, European law is especially weak and professional power is particularly strong. Against this background, the present paper aims to map out the specific configurations of the changing governance of healthcare and the dynamics arising from intersecting contexts of change. We argue that the ‘healthcare state’ is strongly…
Unpacking gendered professional power in the welfare state
Purpose Recent scholarship reveals the imagery of the professional as the “ideal citizen”. The linkage between professionalism and citizenship is here approached from the perspective of democratic social justice in order to examine the persistence of gendered inequalities in the health care system. The paper aims to examine the ideas framing professionalism, both in sociological theory and historically, asking what gendered hierarchies mean in mo…
Reconfiguring Finnish welfare service workforce
Purpose This study seeks to examine the reconfiguration of professional groups in welfare service work through the lens of gendered inequalities in order to develop an inclusive research horizon that extends to the middle grade of care workers. Design/methodology/approach The research design positions workforce change within a wider social and cultural context by highlighting occupational, educational and unionist orders from the viewpoint of Fin…
Gendering social work in Russia
Purpose This article seeks to uncover the gendered nature of discourses in social services and social work textbooks and their impact on the professional identity of social workers in Russia. Design/methodology/approach It is based on qualitative methodology, referring to interview material, and discourse analysis of the Russian textbooks used in social care education. It addresses three dimensions of gender: labour market policies and women's wo…
Nursing careers in France and Britain
Purpose Taking into account strong intra-European discrepancies between workforce models for women, such as part-time work rates and the ability to have uninterrupted careers, this article aims to show how nursing careers are shaped differently by employment and gendered social policies in France and Britain. Using the case of state hospitals, it explores how French and British nurses reconcile sector-specific work constraints and family life at …
Grundlegende Orientierungen für Forschung, Praxis und Politik
Bodies, health, gender—bridging feminist theories and women's health
Consumers enter the political stage? The modernization of health care in Britain and Germany
New governance practices associated with the modernization of health systems within Europe focus on equipping health consumers with more information and power in their interactions with clinicians. This article uses material on health care reform in Britain and Germany to highlight ways in which consumerism is refracted through different institutional histories and current political projects. These give rise to different inflections on the meanin…
Mainstreaming gender into healthcare
Across the globe the concept of gender mainstreaming is indicative of substantive transformations, and healthcare is a particularly important policy arena. Yet existing research reveals only modest success in the implementation of gender policies in national healthcare systems, despite the availability of complex tools and guidelines. This article introduces an approach that links gender mainstreaming with approaches into policy transfer as dynam…
From Women's Health to Gender Mainstreaming and Back Again
This article links experience from the women's health movement to gender mainstreaming approaches and feminist agendas. The aim is to assess the options and limitations of gender mainstreaming and the links with changing governance in healthcare in western countries. From the late 1960s, the women's health movement was a forerunner of today's commonplaces of successful models of health reform. Women significantly advanced new policy approaches on…
Professional self-regulation in a changing architecture of governance
This chapter compares transformations in professional self-regulation in the UK and Germany through the lens of governance. We introduce an expanded concept of governance that includes national configurations of state–;profession relationships and places selfregulation in the context of other forms of governance. The analysis shows that a general trend towards network governance plays out differently. In the UK, a plural structure of network gove…
Reconfiguring Finnish welfare service workforce
Purpose This study seeks to examine the reconfiguration of professional groups in welfare service work through the lens of gendered inequalities in order to develop an inclusive research horizon that extends to the middle grade of care workers. Design/methodology/approach The research design positions workforce change within a wider social and cultural context by highlighting occupational, educational and unionist orders from the viewpoint of Fin…
Gender, professions and public policy
Purpose This article aims to provide an overview on key trends in public sector policy and professional development and how they intersect with gender and diversity. It seeks to explore new configurations in the relationship between gender and the professions and to develop a matrix for the collection of articles presented in this volume. Design/methodology/approach The authors link social policy and governance approaches to the study of professi…
New public management, physicians and populism
Recent debates on the rise of right-wing or neoliberal populism globally have prompted public health and health systems researchers to explore its implications in the healthcare systems. This case study of Turkey's recent health reform initiative, the Health Transformation Program, aims to contribute to this debate by examining the nexus among populism, professionalism and the contemporary market and managerial reforms, often described as New Pub…
The ‘Healthcare State’ in Transition
The building of a European nation challenges entrenched ties between the state and the professions. Yet, in relation to healthcare, European law is especially weak and professional power is particularly strong. Against this background, the present paper aims to map out the specific configurations of the changing governance of healthcare and the dynamics arising from intersecting contexts of change. We argue that the ‘healthcare state’ is strongly…
Traces of Doubt and Sources of Trust
This article analyses the seemingly contradictory developments between seeking trust and demanding control in the field of health care. The author links the debates on trust to the concept of professionalism and changing health policy and practice. Analysis is based on empirical material from a study of modernization of ambulatory care in Germany. Results show that calls are increasing for 'rational criteria' and 'visible markers' of trust both o…
Health professions, gender and society
Changing market conditions, new modes of labour and decreasing legitimisation of experts, as well as an increasing ratio of women, pose new challenges to the professions. These ongoing dynamics are especially visible in the health care system – a traditional professional field with strongly formalised rules governing entrance, initiation and career paths. In addition, this field is highly segregated according to sexes. How do the bove‐mentioned p…
Unpacking gendered professional power in the welfare state
Purpose Recent scholarship reveals the imagery of the professional as the “ideal citizen”. The linkage between professionalism and citizenship is here approached from the perspective of democratic social justice in order to examine the persistence of gendered inequalities in the health care system. The paper aims to examine the ideas framing professionalism, both in sociological theory and historically, asking what gendered hierarchies mean in mo…
Researching transformations in healthcare services and policy in international perspective
Across countries healthcare systems face new pressures for change towards more cost-effective and sustainable health services for all citizens. In recent years health policy-makers have responded to these challenges mainly by introducing or reinforcing market mechanisms and by expanding managerial controls. This is leading to major transformations in health policy and, subsequently, to the organization and delivery of healthcare services. This co…
Professional Governance and Public Control
Governments across the western world face new demands to achieve greater efficiency and responsiveness in public services. The transformations are most radical and challenging in healthcare where both cost effectiveness and patient safety are major issues. Drawing on the National Health Service in the UK and the corporatist system in Germany, this article compares the dynamics of changing governance and public control in the context of different …
Gendering social work in Russia
Purpose This article seeks to uncover the gendered nature of discourses in social services and social work textbooks and their impact on the professional identity of social workers in Russia. Design/methodology/approach It is based on qualitative methodology, referring to interview material, and discourse analysis of the Russian textbooks used in social care education. It addresses three dimensions of gender: labour market policies and women's wo…
Who staffs the US leaning tower? Organisational change and diversity
Purpose The paper aims to argue that US colleges and universities resemble a “leaning tower” with ever expanding layers of administrators and managers who control and dominate university life. This set of institutional changes has altered the way that college administrators are recruited. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses recent developments in institutional theories of organisations to explain the changing environment facing US colleges…
Gendering migration flows
Purpose This article aims to explore the gendered dimensions of the heterogeneous path of non-native graduates in nursing and medicine in the Portuguese National Health Service, including institutional factors like the process of credential recognition, the professional integration and internal labour market segmentation. Design/methodology/approach Biographical interviews with nurses and physicians (23 males and 35 females) from Spain and from s…
Reinventing gender in higher education
Purpose This article aims to address topical issues in the debate on gender (in)equality in higher education in Europe and beyond, and highlights future perspectives of research and practice. Design/methodology/approach It is based on a conference report of the 5th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education that was hosted by Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, 28-31 August 2007. Findings Number matters (“wore women into scien…
Geschlecht - ein Gesundheitsrisiko
Profession und Geschlechterdifferenz
Geschlechterasymmetrie im Wissenschaftsbetrieb
Organisationen und Professionen als Produktionsstätten der Geschlechter(a)symmetrie
Die Optionen für Frauen in der Berufswelt sind vielfältiger, zugleich aber ambivalenter und widersprüchlicher geworden. Zu diesem oder ähnlichen Ergebnissen kommen mehrere neue empirische Studien in so unterschiedlichen Arbeitsmarktbereichen wie industriellen Produktionsbetrieben, Banken, Hochschulen, Professionen. Vom "Ende der Gewissheiten" (Peinl 1999), von "vielfältigen Verschiedenheiten" (Neusel/Wetterer 1999) oder von einer "unordentlichen …
Konfiguration des Menschen
Bodies, health, gender—bridging feminist theories and women's health
Gender differences, gender hierarchies and professions
What part does gender play in professionalism? How does gender translate into hierarchies in professions? This paper attempts to deal with these questions and to move towards an embedded approach that can account for paradoxes of gender and professions. It focuses on the notion of context and the hypothesis that gender is both stable and variable. Using empirical material from a multi‐method study of the German dental profession, three main issue…
Health professions, gender and society
Changing market conditions, new modes of labour and decreasing legitimisation of experts, as well as an increasing ratio of women, pose new challenges to the professions. These ongoing dynamics are especially visible in the health care system – a traditional professional field with strongly formalised rules governing entrance, initiation and career paths. In addition, this field is highly segregated according to sexes. How do the bove‐mentioned p…
Gen- und Reproduktionstechnologien
Die Gen- und Reproduktionstechnologien gehören zu den umstrittensten, aber auch zu den expansivsten Bereichen gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen. Genetische Diagnostik und reproduktive Technologien sind längst aus den Laboren in den (Frauen-) Alltag eingezogen. Die ‚Erfolgsgeschichte ‘begann mit der Pränataldiagnostik (Coventry/Pickstone 1999, Nippert et al. 1997), es folgten die In-vitro Fertilisation, Präimplantationsdiagnostik, Embryonenforschun…
Traces of Doubt and Sources of Trust
This article analyses the seemingly contradictory developments between seeking trust and demanding control in the field of health care. The author links the debates on trust to the concept of professionalism and changing health policy and practice. Analysis is based on empirical material from a study of modernization of ambulatory care in Germany. Results show that calls are increasing for 'rational criteria' and 'visible markers' of trust both o…
Consumers enter the political stage? The modernization of health care in Britain and Germany
New governance practices associated with the modernization of health systems within Europe focus on equipping health consumers with more information and power in their interactions with clinicians. This article uses material on health care reform in Britain and Germany to highlight ways in which consumerism is refracted through different institutional histories and current political projects. These give rise to different inflections on the meanin…
The ‘Healthcare State’ in Transition
The building of a European nation challenges entrenched ties between the state and the professions. Yet, in relation to healthcare, European law is especially weak and professional power is particularly strong. Against this background, the present paper aims to map out the specific configurations of the changing governance of healthcare and the dynamics arising from intersecting contexts of change. We argue that the ‘healthcare state’ is strongly…
Unpacking gendered professional power in the welfare state
Purpose Recent scholarship reveals the imagery of the professional as the “ideal citizen”. The linkage between professionalism and citizenship is here approached from the perspective of democratic social justice in order to examine the persistence of gendered inequalities in the health care system. The paper aims to examine the ideas framing professionalism, both in sociological theory and historically, asking what gendered hierarchies mean in mo…
Reconfiguring Finnish welfare service workforce
Purpose This study seeks to examine the reconfiguration of professional groups in welfare service work through the lens of gendered inequalities in order to develop an inclusive research horizon that extends to the middle grade of care workers. Design/methodology/approach The research design positions workforce change within a wider social and cultural context by highlighting occupational, educational and unionist orders from the viewpoint of Fin…
Gendering social work in Russia
Purpose This article seeks to uncover the gendered nature of discourses in social services and social work textbooks and their impact on the professional identity of social workers in Russia. Design/methodology/approach It is based on qualitative methodology, referring to interview material, and discourse analysis of the Russian textbooks used in social care education. It addresses three dimensions of gender: labour market policies and women's wo…
Nursing careers in France and Britain
Purpose Taking into account strong intra-European discrepancies between workforce models for women, such as part-time work rates and the ability to have uninterrupted careers, this article aims to show how nursing careers are shaped differently by employment and gendered social policies in France and Britain. Using the case of state hospitals, it explores how French and British nurses reconcile sector-specific work constraints and family life at …
Gendering migration flows
Purpose This article aims to explore the gendered dimensions of the heterogeneous path of non-native graduates in nursing and medicine in the Portuguese National Health Service, including institutional factors like the process of credential recognition, the professional integration and internal labour market segmentation. Design/methodology/approach Biographical interviews with nurses and physicians (23 males and 35 females) from Spain and from s…
Gender, professions and public policy
Purpose This article aims to provide an overview on key trends in public sector policy and professional development and how they intersect with gender and diversity. It seeks to explore new configurations in the relationship between gender and the professions and to develop a matrix for the collection of articles presented in this volume. Design/methodology/approach The authors link social policy and governance approaches to the study of professi…
Who staffs the US leaning tower? Organisational change and diversity
Purpose The paper aims to argue that US colleges and universities resemble a “leaning tower” with ever expanding layers of administrators and managers who control and dominate university life. This set of institutional changes has altered the way that college administrators are recruited. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses recent developments in institutional theories of organisations to explain the changing environment facing US colleges…
Reinventing gender in higher education
Purpose This article aims to address topical issues in the debate on gender (in)equality in higher education in Europe and beyond, and highlights future perspectives of research and practice. Design/methodology/approach It is based on a conference report of the 5th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education that was hosted by Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, 28-31 August 2007. Findings Number matters (“wore women into scien…
Professional self-regulation in a changing architecture of governance
This chapter compares transformations in professional self-regulation in the UK and Germany through the lens of governance. We introduce an expanded concept of governance that includes national configurations of state–;profession relationships and places selfregulation in the context of other forms of governance. The analysis shows that a general trend towards network governance plays out differently. In the UK, a plural structure of network gove…
Professional Governance and Public Control
Governments across the western world face new demands to achieve greater efficiency and responsiveness in public services. The transformations are most radical and challenging in healthcare where both cost effectiveness and patient safety are major issues. Drawing on the National Health Service in the UK and the corporatist system in Germany, this article compares the dynamics of changing governance and public control in the context of different …
From Women's Health to Gender Mainstreaming and Back Again
This article links experience from the women's health movement to gender mainstreaming approaches and feminist agendas. The aim is to assess the options and limitations of gender mainstreaming and the links with changing governance in healthcare in western countries. From the late 1960s, the women's health movement was a forerunner of today's commonplaces of successful models of health reform. Women significantly advanced new policy approaches on…
Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine
Mainstreaming gender into healthcare
Across the globe the concept of gender mainstreaming is indicative of substantive transformations, and healthcare is a particularly important policy arena. Yet existing research reveals only modest success in the implementation of gender policies in national healthcare systems, despite the availability of complex tools and guidelines. This article introduces an approach that links gender mainstreaming with approaches into policy transfer as dynam…
Political science (31 works) · Health care (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Economics (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Economic growth (10 works) · Law (10 works)