Gender Discrimination in Nursing

Nursing is one of the well-known and one of the fastest growing professions we have in the united states. Gender discrimination or sexism in nursing is a big problem and has been for a long time. The main causes of discrimination in the nursing field come from accepting men as nurses. Gender discrimination is basically any type of restriction on gender role that prevents someone from enjoying their full rights as a human being. There tends to be a lot of gender bias and gender discrimination in the nursing field. Some think that nursing field is more for female than male because feminine are more caring. Male nurses sometimes are stereotyped both outside and within the profession as homosexual and low achievers. According to semantic scholar study that was conducted in 2011, the reason there's not enough men in the nursing field is because of negative stereotypes. Men who enter the nursing field are sometimes looked at as outcasts. They have faced stereotypes and discrimination from both coworkers and patients.

In order to have a clear idea on gender discrimination in nursing profession, we must first understand the past. The founder of modern nursing was a woman named Florence Nightingale. She blamed everything bad that was wrong in nursing in the mid-19th century on men. According to Archives of Medicine and Health, in 1854, Florence Nightingale went into the battleground hospitals of the Crimean war and took some trained nurses with her. she was convinced that it was because men were horrible at nursing that’s why some many soldiers were dying. She made it seem like women are superior nurses than men. Men were not allowed to participate in the nightingale nursing program. Men that decided to become a nurse had to overcome some type of barriers. They had to train in a all men’s nursing school, which pretty few and far between and they were also related to all nursing registries that funneled them into areas that were considered appropriate for male nurses which essentially limited them to being orderlies and attendants in psychiatric wards and hospitals where their physical strength was much more appropriated.
Some people were not so interested in men becoming nurses. There was even institutional and legal ban on men joining the nursing profession.

For Example, in 1901, the army nursing corps was built mainly for women. However, around 1955 the military finally said it was okay for men to work as nurses. In1982, the last ban on nursing male students was dropped (Archives of Medicine and Health,2016). Sadly, still to this day nurse remains a womanly quality to the fact that even some men in the nursing field are yet still repeatedly complaining about being called a “male nurse” as if their gender needs to be put out there because it is still such an outlier in the field. Men tend to be excluded from various forms of activities in the nursing field. Due to gender discrimination, it is not so common for a man to become a lactation nurse or nurse midwife. Gender discrimination for jobs is ridiculous. The most important is the quality of the person. Nursing is for anyone of any gender that are willing to work and strive to make a change in nursing.

The art of science has not always been all about a female. The nursing field is not a gender, it is a profession. There should be no significates to a person's gender in an occupation. Some patients and even some doctors often feel that male nurses should not be near the patients. For example, a friend of mine once told me that during one of his clinical rotations, he had to stay out while a patient was giving birth, meanwhile, his female classmates were able to be a part of the delivery of the baby. While on the other hand, some patients like the idea of having a male nurse to take care of them because they feel as if they would understand them a lot better.
Though the united states have made some progress when it comes to gender discrimination; sadly, it is still frowned upon. Men in the nursing field are there to make a difference every single day in someone’s life. The main reason why men enter the nursing field is the same as women; they want to take care of people that are in need and they understand nursing’s job security and the opportunity of earning a good income.

Men in the nursing field are becoming more and more populated each and every day. There is a growth in the nursing filed due to lack of nurses and the fact that some hospitals want diverse workers to be working for them. Some would say that men don't belong in nursing because it is a "women profession" I believe it is unfair and untrue. Others need to start embracing the idea of men as nurses, which will lead to male nurses to give better care to their patients. I strongly believe that there are ways around every situation. However, gender discrimination is not one of them.

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