Males make up around 11% of the nurses in the UK, 9% in the US, 6.4% in Canada, 1% in China, 6% in Japan.
Experts believe there are various factors responsible for the lack of male representation in the profession.
Factor 1: Stereotyping.
From childhood, we get exposed mostly to imagery of a female nurse.
In fact, one of the words used to refer to a senior nurse is matron, which comes from matr — ‘mother’From Old French Matrone, from Latin matrona, from mater, matr — mother.
Florence Nightingale, who established the principles of modern-day nursing, is believed to have said that men’s “hard and horny” hands were “not fitted to touch, bathe and dress wounded limbs”.
The name ‘nurse’ also doesn’t help — one of the meanings is ‘to breastfeed a baby’.
Factor 2: Constraints imposed by decision-making bodies.
In England, the Royal College of Nursing, the profession’s union, did not admit men as members until 1960.
A number of nursing schools in America didn’t admit males until 1982.
This meant fewer male nurses, to begin with, to guide the next generation of men into the profession.
And some countries also have high reservation quotas for females in nursing.
E.g., In India, in a 2019 meeting held by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), 80% of the nurse posts were reservedAIIMS Nurses Union alleged gender discrimination in the reservation and this may be repealed but it highlights the mindset skew.for females.
Factor 3: Concerns about male touch.
Men don’t actively seek this profession because of reported concerns that their touch when providing care might be misinterpreted and result in accusations of sexual inappropriateness.
