How to attain gender equality in nursing—an essay

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic shows that where, when, how, and to whom care is delivered has never been more diverse. In today's healthcare, the people delivering care must be similarly diverse, for the benefit of the profession, its practitioners, and patients. 1 -3 Yet around 90% of the world's nurses are women. 4 Calls are being made, as they have before, to examine ways to promote the profession among men to tackle this imbalance. 1 5 Nursing is an inherently human experience: it is done for humans, by humans, and as humans, and in human experience no one gender claims primacy. Men have had, and continue to have, a valuable contribution to make to nursing, not simply because they are male but because they are human. Men enter the profession for the same reason as women-to care for people.

How Idealized Professional Identities Can Persist through Client Interactions

“…As with other occupations that often top the lists of what children say they want to be when they grow up (Polavieja and Platt, 2014), nursing is a profession regularly (mis)represented in literature, TV sitcoms, and movies (Stanley, 2008; Carroll and Rosa, 2016). Numerous nursing leaders have lamented the unrealistic media representations shaping society’s image of nursing, which associate nursing with stereotypically feminine values and may discourage men from becoming nurses (Kalisch, Kalisch, and Clinton, 1982; Buresh and Gordon, 1995; Dingwall and Allen, 2001; Cabaniss, 2011; Kearns and Mahon, 2021). For example, many Halloween costumes still represent nurses in white caps and dresses despite nursing uniforms consisting of loose-fitting scrubs for over 30 years.…”

Professional Identity Scale for Male Nursing Students Using the Rasch Model and Latent Regression on Gender and Background Variables

“…Age was negatively associated with behavioural identity and not with cognitive and emotional identity for both genders. This may imply that finding ways to maintain their behavioural identity after their graduation from school was a key point in solving the challenge of attrition among male nurses within four years of starting their careers [ 1 , 18 , 19 , 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”

“…The number of male nursing students is on the rise worldwide [ 1 ]. However, female nursing students continue to outnumber their male counterparts.…”

“…PI is a dynamic phenomenon that continues to evolve from university study into a health professionals’ work life [ 17 ]. However, research has shown that after graduating, most male nurses leave nursing within four years of starting their careers [ 1 , 18 , 19 ]. The PI of male nursing students was lower than that of their female counterparts [ 10 , 20 ].…”

How to reposition the nursing profession for a post-covid age

“…But these considerations must be viewed within a wider global context that includes gender equity45 and climate change6 as drivers of a new public health policy debate. And to reach universal health coverage by 2030 nurses must radically reframe their relationship with digital technology 7…”