Antonietta Pallonetti, History 150 Spring 2017, conducted by Joseph Clarkin, March 15, 2017.

a. The interview was conducted over FaceTime on my laptop. There was nothing at all to edit, as the interview was asked not to be shared by the interviewee. I took my laptop into a study room in my dorm here at James Madison University to conduct the interview.

b. Antonietta Pallonetti is a 47 year old nurse, who has two children and lives on Long Island, New York. Antonietta was not always a nurse, as she switched careers in the middle of her life. Before becoming a nurse she owned a small business where she was a sales person. She is still taking nursing courses in order to further her education in the medical field.

c. Nursing is a very female oriented occupation as only about 9 percent of registered nurses are male. Jobs in the nursing field are the second most common among women. Those two statistics alone display the rarity of male nurses.

d.

J: “Today I will be interviewing Antonietta Pallonetti.

J: “How many years have you worked as a nurse?”

A: “I’ve been working as a nurse for about four years. I got my degree at Molloy College on Long Island, New York.

J: “What did you do prior to studying nursing?”

A: “Prior to studying nursing I owned my own business where we sold electronic components, like semi-conductors, capacitors, and resistors. I did that for 21 years. It was a very small company I only had eight employees working for me.”

J: “What made you want to switch careers and become a nurse? What was your ultimate goal?”

A: “Well, many of my clients were medical companies so I interacted with many people in the medical field so that’s what sparked my interest in nursing. Then I began losing clients to bigger companies and my company started to go under and being a woman, I saw nursing as a better career choice because it seemed more stable and I saw a lot of opportunities in that career. I also do enjoy caring for people and helping people and nursing is a very therapeutic type of career. And my ultimate goal is to do missions; to go to a third world country and volunteer my services.”

J: “Have you ever experienced an unequal treatment of men and women while working as a nurse, or even prior to studying nursing?”

A: “In nursing I haven’t seen much unequal treatment between men and women, although male nurses do get paid more than female nurses because they can lift patients and do more. Prior to that, in my other career, Yes, in sales men made more, they were able to close more deals because some companies wanted to only deal with men instead of women.

J: “What was expected of you, in regards to working, when you began starting a family?”

A: “Well, I did work part time to stay home and raise my family.”

J: “So you went from full time to part time when you began starting a family?”

A: “Yes I went from full time to part time and I worked from home, while my husband didn’t change his work schedule at all when we started having kids. We couldn’t afford to put the kids in day care so I had to stay home to take care of them. Balancing kids and work at the same time was a struggle. It also wasn’t fair that my husband wasn’t expected to miss any work to take care of them.”

J: “When you were in college were there more males or females?”

A: “There were more females in college.”

J: “And how did that compare to the nursing major?”

A: “There were definitely a lot more females in the nursing major in college. My college was probably 60 percent females and 40 percent males, but the nursing major was probably 98 percent females.”

J: “Has the amount of males working as nurses changed over time?”

A: “Yes, there are more male nurses [now] than years back.”

J: “Overall, how has gender played a role in the shaping of your career as a nurse?”

A: “Well, it is a female dominant career, but more and more males are making their way into the nursing field. I think people are becoming more accepting of male [nurses], but it is still a female dominant career.

J: “But has your gender affected or shaped your career in any way?”

A: “No, I feel like I have always been treated equally to men. Like I said before there are things that men can do that I can’t like carry patients but I don’t see that as unfair treatment really.

J: “Okay thank you for your time that is the end of the interview.”

 

Conclusion 

Originally, I planned to do the interview in person over spring break. Unfortunately circumstances, out of my control, did not permit me to complete it when planned. Instead I was forced to do it while back at school over FaceTime. I don’t believe that this problem affected the quality of the interview, but it did make it slightly more difficult. I think that since it was done over FaceTime, we were more inclined to stay on track and there probably would have been more divergences if we had done the interview in person. Overall, it was a positive experience for me and i felt it went very well.