Final Paper

Hearing Nurse John is not as common as hearing Nurse Betty or Nurse Jane. But recently more men have decided to take the nursing career path and become male nurses, also referred to as “murses.” The article “I Want Your Job, Lady” in Time states that “in a sour economy, men are flocking to nursing, child care and other ‘female’ professions” (Cullen et al., 2003). The nursing profession needs to take steps to erase completely the gender-bias that still exists because although nursing is less discriminatory than it has been in the past, for too long the stereotype that nursing is a career only for women, kept men from entering the profession, but with the current acute shortage of nurses, the profession needs everyone with a calling--regardless of gender; in fact, in specific settings such as a mental hospitals, male nurses because of their greater physical strength are in particularly high demand. When considering the nursing profession, men show less concern about society's thoughts because of their gender because nursing is less discriminatory now than it was in the past. The Nursing Journal states: “Historical events and influential people such as Florence Nightingale hold significance in contributing to some of the dilemmas men in nursing face” (Clementson, 2008, p. 42). The Industrial Revolution was a time when men worked as factory works, not nurses. Some men considered the nursing profession but the discrimination against them prevented that from happening. The Time article “I Want Your Job, Lady” is all about men now taking on female-dominated jobs: “Younger men seem less concerned about gender stereotypes than do their elders, perhaps because many grew up with working mothers, with girls as equals in the classroom or with female bosses” (Cullen et al., 2003). Men in the past did not have the opportunities to become nurses since nursing was a female-dominated profession. Men today surrounded by working women in male-dominated professions such as police