Gender Diversity In Nursing Essay

Women dominated careers tend to fall into the care-giving occupations such as nursing, early childhood education and hairdressing, and males are dominate in the logical thinking and hands on occupations such as academia, information technology, accountancy and the timber industry (Hoffnung, et al., 2013). Being a male in a female dominated profession such as nursing can create many challenges and can lead to negative impacts on how they view themselves as a nurse (Rajacich, Kane, Williston, & Cameron, 2013). With the growing diversity of todays society we would assume that gender equality was more prominent than ever (MacWilliams, Schmidt, Bleich 2013), but with only 10% of men accounting for licensed registered nurses since 2000 (MacWilliams,

Bradley stated that student nurses agreed that nursing is not as female dominate then it used to be and that males are good nurses (as cited in Rajacich et al., 2013). Gender diversity is a great benefit to the profession of nursing and its diverse number of patients (MacWilliams, 2013). Stated by Goldman for the organisation, it leads to reduced employee commitment and lower job performance, as well as the potential for lawsuits (as cited by Hoffnung, et al., 2013). This sort of role strain, job dissatisfaction and lack of support for male nurses leads to many leaving their chosen profession, if only for a short time (Rajacich et al., 2013). Stated by Sochalski 7.5% of male graduate nurses were not working in 2000 compared to 4.1% of female graduates (as cited in Rajacich et al., 2013). With the challenges of workplace discrimination and lack of support and impacts of and job dissatisfaction and potential lawsuits it is easy to see why men in nursing are found to be the minority, and the nursing professing is losing valuable employees that are assets to the nursing