A statue of a nurse placed outside of a hospital in Zielona Góra, southwestern Poland, has been slammed by medical professionals for being sexist.
A petition has been launched by hospital staff calling for its removal.
The statue, inspired by the Lara Croft character, was unveiled on October 10. It portrays a woman in high heels wearing a low-cut dress with a short skirt and posing with an outsized syringe.
It is titled Zdrovitka (Healthy Woman) and is supposed to honour the work of the hundreds of nurses, midwives and female staff at the University hospital in Zielona Góra.
Zdrovitka is one of the city’s Bacchantes – 79 miniature statues around the city.
The name was chosen to honour the city’s wine-making traditions as Bacchantes were, according to Roman mythology, female members of the retinue of Bacchus, god of wine and revelry.
The nurses have complained that the statue was frivolous, stereotypical and sexist. On the evening following its unveiling on October 10, it was wrapped from head to toe in white bandages.
A petition has been launched calling for Zdrovitka’s removal which claims that the “figurine sexualises nurses, perpetuates stereotypes and undermines the dignity of female medical staff who face harassment and disrespect from patients and colleagues daily”.
“Placing a statue in front of a hospital, associated with cabaret or erotica, is a symbolic slap in the face to all medical staff,” it adds.
The creator of Zdrovitka, sculptor Artur Wochniak, who has made many of the city’s Bacchantes, said that like all of that series of statues it was meant to be witty, satirical and entertaining.
“She was to look like a Lara Croft-type warrior, only with a syringe instead of a gun, a cool, pretty, beautiful woman. And she was to be a little sexy, like most of my Bacchantes,” he said, explaining the creative inspiration behind his work.
He has been backed backed by the hospital’s management who have argued that the statue was “artistic and entertaining”.
Nurses were not amused, and the District Chamber of Nurses and Midwives in Zielona Góra has demanded the statue’s removal.
