Gender Discrimination in Female Dominated Work Spaces

Prompt: Male nurses have reported facing discrimination within the workplace. They have
reported being ostracized from their female co-workers and experiencing blatant inequality in the
perception of their professional ability in more intimate care situations. Why might male nurses
be perceived as being less capable than their female counterparts? Evaluate and analyze how
male nurses are discriminated against.

Sophia Mojonnier
Garcia and Stoll
27 October 2014

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Within professions heavily dominated by males or females, the non dominant gender
tends to face discrimination within the workplace. Whichever gender is the minority faces being
ostracized from their coworkers in numerous forms. Language referring to only one gender is a
tool for immediate segregation, and while often not intentional, still adds to the feeling of being
ostracized. In some cases, professional ability is doubted based solely on a persons gender, even
if they have been working in their field for years. When discussing gender discrimination in the
work place, the gender that comes to mind is often female. However, there is a substantial
amount of gender discrimination against men in primarily female dominated fields such as
nursing. Due to all the gender stereotyping surrounding nursing, very few men ever become
nurses to begin with. They face harsh stereotypes, such as the one that states that all male nurses
are homosexual, in addition to critics from peers and family members on their choice of
occupation. Nursing is stereotyped as a female job, with roots going back to Florence
Nightingale, who helped to establish nursing as a career, on the foundations that it was a
womens job. Inside the present day work place, male nurses are unusual and many patients are
wary, especially female patients, of male nurses assisting them and in some cases are not trusted
to maintain professionalism even if there is no cause to distrust them. Male nurses and male
nursing students have reported being and feeling ostracized, and being perceived as less capable
of being professional than their female counterparts.
Originally, nursing was founded on the principle that it was a female job. Even before its
official establishment as a career, only women preformed the duties that would later be
considered nursing. Florence Nightingale, the woman credited with creating nursing as a
profession, founded it on the principal that only women could become nurses. Any profession
that could remotely fall into the category of caretaker was almost automatically associated

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with women. Women were the caregivers and men went out to work. Women took care of the
family and the house, and cared for sick children or family members. A main component of
nursing is patient care, so the role of a nurse was immediately assumed as feminine. Men were
considered to lack the capacity to provide mothering and caringso they were excluded from
nursing (Kouta and Charis 59). Florence Nightingale founded nursing with the belief that men
were incapable of caring for ill and injured people. In her opinion, they had no ability to provide
the motherly care that was necessary as a nurse. In her series of notes, she consistently uses
gendered pronouns indicative of women. There is no mention of men other than as the role of the
patient. The actions of a nurse are consistently referred to as she ought to or her patients
face, indicating that the role of the nurse ought to be female (Nightingale 202). Due to the fact
that when Nightingale began her reform of nursing, only women were nurses, she only used
female pronouns in an attempt to draw more women in, and have it relate better to women
currently in the profession. The only examples that Nightingale gives of nurses are women as
well, such as, A good nurse scarcely ever asks a patient a questionneither as to what he [the
patient] feels nor what he wants but she does not take for granted, either to herself or to others,
that she knows what he feels and what he wants(Ibid 203). Again, the use of strictly female
pronouns emphasizes the fact that only women were nurses, and only women were to be nurses,
laying the foundation of nursing as a womens career. Nightingale states My dear sister, there is
nothing in the world, except perhaps educationwhich requires so much power of throwing
yourself into others feelings which you have never felt,and if you have none of this power,
you had better let nursing alone (Ibid 202). Here she is directly appealing to women, which was
her audience at the time, by using female pronouns and describing emotions to be a main
component of the job. However, setting the standard that women were to be nurses set about the

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ideal for future generations that nursing is only a womens job and set the foundations for
powerful social stigmas against men becoming nurses in the future.
With the connotation that patient care was a feminine job, men who became nurses
tended to flock to more technical areas, and areas that involved less direct patient care. Florence
Nightingales ideals that men are incapable of nursing are still evident within the large clusters
that men have formed within the nursing field. With nursing being a predominantly female job,
and the stigma that patient care was a completely feminine job, men specialized in work roles
in which the need for direct interaction with the patients was minimal: the men typically
specialized in anesthesia, emergency room, or intensive care nursing, where they worked
primarily as experts on technical machinery, not as caregivers as such. (Williams 98). In the late
eighties, it was noted by Christine L. Williams in her study of male nurses that the rare men in
the field preserved their masculine working style and created a special male bastion; the men
specialized in intensive care, emergency care, or administration (Ibid). Intensive care and
emergency care are fields that require a high level skill set, and the ability to repress emotional
responses, which is arguably one of the most common stereotypes of men. Administration falls
into a stereotypically male job as well, with it still being the case that men hold more, higher
office positions than women. Society is geared so that men are seen as less emotional, and fill
more advanced positions, or are the typical office worker. All three of those nursing fields are
more technical, and require minimal patient care. Intensive Care and Emergency Care are both
fast paced and extremely technical in comparison to General Care and Geriatrics which involve
heavy patient interaction and a less technical skill set.
More physically demanding jobs in the nursing field are also considered more masculine.
An example of a nursing field that requires more physical strength than most would be

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psychiatric nursing. There are more male nurses working in psychiatric care because it has
been regarded as more masculine and better suited for men, since the work demands physical
strength and special skills to handle difficult and potentially aggressive patients (Williams 96).
Psychiatric nursing does involve more patient care than ICU or ER nursing, however due to the
connotations that come along with it; it is regarded as more masculine. They are working with
unstable patients rather than nursing a patient back to health in the way that a mother would
care for a sick child. Psychiatric nursing can be more easily justified as a suitable nursing job for
a man to choose because of the physical and emotional demands on the person. When asked to
think of words commonly associated with nurses, people usually reply with words that are
synonymous to kind, compassionate and or gentle, if not those exact words. Those same
words would not come to mind if someone had been asked to think about the word psychiatric.
The environment within that field can be emotionally draining, require a greater amount of
physical strength, and could therefore be a more justifiable career choice for a male nurse, and
used to prevent any negative stigmas from being applied to them.
Male nurses not working within fields designated as more masculine can be subject to
daily discrimination inside the workplace. Typical language use revolves around female
pronouns. Male nurses often get erased from the picture with the language used to refer to
nurses being primarily female gendered. What typically comes to mind when talking about a
nurse, is a woman in scrubs and it is by default that people use gendered language when referring
to them. Any male presence within nursing comes as a culture shock, and they are forgotten
about when referring to nurses as a whole, or a specific group. With females dominating the
nursing work force, language usages like sister or girls would be used to indicate a
registered nurse and, as a consequence, triggered an awareness of gender difference when used

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in participants presence. Consequently they [male nurses] felt a sense of exclusion from their
profession (Inoue et al 563). Human beings are always subconsciously aware of their gender
identity but it is not until a situation makes them consciously aware of their gender identity that
they fully realize that they are different from, or similar to one another. It also happens that as
people get older, the social differences between genders become slightly more pronounced.
However, when someone is immersed within a community, and their main identity does not lie
with their gender, the differences retreat to the subconscious because the individual identifies
themselves as part of a group where everyone is the same thing and there are no differences
when everyone is the same thing. Becoming consciously aware that they are different from their
female counterparts is a jarring and disorientating experience for male nurses because suddenly,
they are not all nurses, but male nurses and female nurses instead of one cohesive unit. One man
stated in an interview that:
When working in a female-dominated environment you realize that you are possibly
excluded from things. Even when colleagues and patients are going home they will say,
Have a good shift, girls or Thank you, sister and most forget that you [male nurse]
are there. You are aware that you are not automatically part of the group and feel different
from them [female colleagues] (Inoue et al.563)
There is frequent dissociation from their environment, and frequent reminder that they are
separate from their coworkers. People are using gender specific terminology because nurses are
more often than not female, and the ideal of a nurse being a woman is so ingrained into everyone
and the fact that their usage of only female pronouns is automatically ostracizing any male nurse
in the vicinity is not registered.

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Male nurses have, in some cases, been restricted from performing certain procedures on
women, or were required to be accompanied by a female nurse where as female nurses were not
required to refrain or be accompanied by a male nurse when performing the same procedure on a
man. The fact that the male nurse needed to be accompanied shows that there is a lack of trust in
the fact that he can remain professional. There should be no reason to doubt their ability to treat
an intimate procedure as part of their job, and remain professional while performing it. In the
case of one student who was required to perform an ECG on a woman, which is a procedure that
involves touching the patients chest and is considered intimate where he was required him to
be accompanied by a female nurse. However, female nurses performing ECGs to males were not
required to be accompanied by anyone. The appellant felt [that he was]not [trusted] enough to
fulfill this process (Kouta and Charis 61). The student was not trusted in his ability to maintain
his professionalism while performing what is considered to be an intimate care procedure on a
member of the opposite sex, where as his female counterparts faced no such blatant distrust. This
is not a case of the patient being uncomfortable with a male nurse performing the procedure, as
the patient has to give their consent for a nursing student to perform the procedure and had ample
opportunity to voice that they would prefer a female student perform it, or if they were
uncomfortable with a man performing the procedure.
Being restricted from performing certain procedures or observing certain procedures also
occurs during clinical studies with male nursing students. Clinical studying is arguably the most
important part of earning a nursing degree. It is how nursing students take all of the theoretical
knowledge that they have learned over the course of their collegiate career, and apply it to
actuality. Through their clinical they gain vital experience in performing procedures, and learn
the general environment of a variety of hospital departments. When a nursing student is restricted

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from full participation in their clinical studies, they are directly being disadvantaged. They lose
the opportunity to gain firsthand experience, which has the potential to be detrimental to their
career. In one particular instance, Moyhing,:
a student studying for a bachelor of science degree in nursing who has been undertaking
clinical placement at the respondent hospitalclaimed that they [nursing staff] asked him
not to participate or watch intimate examinations, while this was not asked form a female
fellow student. He supported that during his duty, there was a culture of confrontation
that male nurses were second-quality citizens (Kouta and Charis 61)
There is an obvious gap between the status of male and female nursing students in this situation.
Not only is the nursing staff directly segregating the students, they are denying this student the
education that he needs, and for no reasonable purpose. This student was denied the ability to
fully participate in his clinical placement simply because of his gender. Again, this is not a case
of a female patient being uncomfortable with a male nurse observing or participating in a more
intimate procedure, this is the nursing staff explicitly denying him the ability to participate at all
in any sort of intimate procedure. He is being denied full access to an education that he is entitled
to, while his female counterparts face no such restrictions and are able to fully participate.
In addition to facing discrimination in the workplace and during clinical placements,
male nurses often face discrimination outside of their work, often from friends and family. Many
men who are interested in a nursing career fear that they will get ridiculed for their choice in
profession. From its inception, nursing has been considered a female job and:
many male nursing students will experience anxiety and stress when dealing with a
patient and their familyand sometimes even their own familybecause of this stigma

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which just serves to perpetuate the idea that nursing is not viewed as a respectable
profession for men (Pham)
The stigma that nursing is not an acceptable job for men is the very reason that we see so few
male nurses. It is deemed a wonderful thing when women move into careers that are male
dominated, but demeaning when men move into careers that are female dominated. Part of the
problem, is that society has ingrained it to be that a man doing something that is decidedly
feminine is completely unacceptable and the man in question is immediately emasculated. The
public image of a male nurse is not the typical masculine image. If men are included in the
spectrum of nurses, they are immediately seen as effeminate, and struggle with social stereotypes
that include being reminded regularly that nursing was not a mans job and the widespread
belief that all male nurses homosexual (Inoue et. al 563). A large stereotype of homosexual
men is that they are more effeminate; more empathetic and emotional than heterosexual men.
With this incorrect information being so widely known, men in female associated jobs are
assumed to be more effeminate and therefore homosexual. It is not directly the fact that they are
assumed to be homosexual that keeps men away from becoming nurses; it is the fact that they
will be assumed to be something they are not that keeps men away. If a person cannot
confidently be themselves without anyone automatically assuming who they are because they
work in a certain profession, most likely, that person will not work in that profession. There are
no such stigmas working against women in the nursing field. Women are never told that nursing
is not a suitable profession for them, nor are there assumptions made about them to explain why
they must be a nurse when there are other options available. If a woman is a nurse, it is accepted
without question of her character or the fit of the job because nursing has always been a female
dominated field.

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The discrimination that male nurses face is one example of a much larger problem of
gender discrimination as a whole. A societal norm defining what is appropriate for a man to do,
and what is appropriate for a woman to do is what allows this discrimination to happen. When
people dare to remove themselves from what is considered to be normal, is when they become
subject to discrimination. Society has gendered a select few jobs and made some of them almost
taboo to pursue if the person does not identify with the dominant gender in the field. Furthermore
gender discrimination in the workplace is not solely restricted to women in male dominated
fields. Male nurses are often ostracized and restricted from performing procedures because their
professional abilities are doubted to their gender. Gender discrimination exists wherever society
has stereotyped a career path to belong to a certain gender.

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Works Cited
Anthony, Ann Strong. "Gender Bias and Discrimination in Nursing Education." Nurse Educator 29.3
(2004): 121-25. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
Inoue, Madoka, Rose Chapman, and Dianne Wynaden. "Male Nurses' Experiences of Providing
Intimate Care for Women Clients." Journal of Advanced Nursing 55.5 (2006): 559-67. Web. 21
Sept. 2014.
Kouta, Christiana, and Charis P. Kaite. "Gender Discrimination and Nursing: Literature
Review."Journal of Professional Nursing 27.1 (2011): 59-63. Web. 13 Sept. 2014.
Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1992. Print.
Pham, Tri, PHD, RN, AOCNP-BC, ANP-BC. "Men in Nursing." Minority Nurse. N.p., n.d. Web. 13
Sept. 2014. <http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/men-nursing>.
Williams, Christine L. Doing "Women's Work": Men in Nontraditional Occupations. Newburry Park:
Sage Publications, 1993. Print.