Ambivalent Gender Roles

Sex Roles
DOI 10.1007/s11199-014-0418-0

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Are You Man Enough to be a Nurse? The Impact of Ambivalent
Sexism and Role Congruity on Perceptions of Men and Women in Nursing Advertisements
Kimberley A. Clow & Rosemary Ricciardelli &
Wally J. Bartfay

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Framed by role congruity and ambivalent sexism, the current study is designed to investigate perceptions of male and female nurses. Specifically, 167 Canadian undergraduates from Southern Ontario viewed a potential nursing recruitment advertisement (female nurse, male nurse, or masculinity emphasized male nurse), reported their perceptions of the nurse in the advertisement, and rated the appropriateness of nursing as a
career
2008), the theory appears equally applicable to men in female dominated social roles. Consider the example of men in nursing. The World Health Organization found that, across countries, “lower level front line positions (e.g. nurses) are staffed by predominantly women and more senior positions
(e.g. doctors) of influence and power are filled mainly by men”
(Govender and Penn-Kekana 2007, p. 12). Looking specifically at nursing, the Canadian Nurses Association (2006) reported that only 5.6 % of Canadian nurses are male. Men have been reported to comprise less than approximately 10 % of all nurses in countries such as Australia, Hungary, Israel, Japan,
Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Taiwan, Thailand, the United
States, and the United Kingdom (O’Lynn and Tranbarger
2007; Romem and Anson 2005; Yang et al. 2004). As nurses currently tend to be women worldwide, this gendered division of labor in health care may encourage the development of stereotypes suggesting that there is something inherent in a woman that is necessary for being a nurse (see Clow
As men entering nursing may be seen to threaten existing gendered power hierarchies, and these gendered divisions and stereotypes have been theorized as justifications for men’s greater status and power over women (Cejka and Eagly 1999; Pratto and
Pitpitan 2008), men potentially have more to lose than women when current power hierarchies are challenged. Moreover, men entering less traditional social roles, such as communal roles like nursing, may alter gender stereotypes—in this case, what is considered masculine behavior—and that potentially has greater consequences for men than women. Thus, we expected men to be more resistant than women to these potential status-quo challenging nurses. As such, we thought that male participants would rate the male nurses less favorably than would the female participants. Specifically, we expected male participants in comparison to female participants to rate male nurses lower in competence and higher in deviance and to rate nursing as a less appropriate career choice for men.
In terms of ambivalent sexism, past research has found hostile sexism to be related to negative reactions to nontraditional women, whereas benevolent sexism was related