Gender Stereotypes Of Men In The Nursing Profession

Men in Nursing: A Rising Job Outlook while Overcoming Discrimination

Many people have been to a hospital in their lifetime so they all have experiences with nurses. But many overlook the men in nursing, even though they are very much needed in their profession and highly desired. Although they are desired in their field and have a great job outlook over the foreseeable future, they are still facing issues of discrimination to this day.

The common idea that nursing was a form of a woman’s natural domestic role set nursing as a “woman’s” occupation with lower “value” than a “man’s” occupations such as the field of medicine. This lack in perceived value led to the lower salaries of nurses initially. These lower salaries and poor status of jobs

In England for every 9 female nurses, there is only 1 male nurse, yet for every 3 male supervisors, there is only 1 female supervisor. Also only 10% of the total surgeons are women. Even though men choose the nursing profession for the same reasons that many women do, often they are portrayed by media as “male nurses” and women as simply “nurses”.

Many of the reasons that gender bias and role stereotyping do exist in nursing educational programs because many of the nursing faculties are composed of mainly women. Nursing has for hundreds of years been associated with feminine ways of caring. In Florence Nightingale’s time, men were considered to lack the ability to care for other people, so they were excluded from nursing. Therefore, male and female nursing students have different learning experiences in nursing. Dr. Sherrod argued that nursing faculty is using an educational system that was designed to primarily educate

This survey was sent to 51 of the e-mail addresses of their male members to find out if they had ever encountered a form of gender discrimination, either within their work or in the nursing school. The results of the survey showed that 58% of the respondents said they had not experienced gender bias during nursing school, where 42% of them stated they had felt a form of gender bias from the faculty and the nursing staff, but not from patients. As professionals in the field, ¾ of them reported feeling bias from the nursing staff and 8% of them reported bias from the female physicians.

Studies over male student’s thoughts of obstacles that create gender bias and stereotyping in the nursing field reported that: 1. there is no male faculty in nursing, 2. Educators refer to nurses using the word “She” 3. There are limited opportunities to work with male nurses in clinical settings, and 4. During the presentation of the history of nursing, there is nothing about the history of men in nursing. In addition, lack of awareness by nurse educators of the unique needs of male learners and a lack of gender neutrality in nursing