Hospitals

Study: Uptick in demand for nurses draws more men to the profession

  For every nine women nurses working in hospitals, doctors’ offices and clinics, there’s one man doing the same job. That ratio might seem pretty small, but it’s a lot higher than it was 30 years ago, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. “The aging of our population has fueled an […]

By Deanna Pogorelc on February 25, 2013 4:11 pm

 

For every nine women nurses working in hospitals, doctors’ offices and clinics, there’s one man doing the same job. That ratio might seem pretty small, but it’s a lot higher than it was 30 years ago, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

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“The aging of our population has fueled an increasing demand for long-term care and end-of-life services,” writes Liana Christin Landivar, a sociologist in the Census Bureau’s Industry and Occupation Statistics Branch, and author of a new data analysis called Men in Nursing Occupations. “A predicted shortage has led to recruiting and retraining efforts to increase the pool of nurses. These efforts have included recruiting men into nursing.”

Whereas in 1970, only 2.7 percent of nurses were men, the most recent Census Bureau data indicates that more than 9 percent of them are today.

Interestingly, the pay gap that persists in other areas of healthcare holds true here too. Men earn, on average, $60,700 per year compared to women’s $51,100 per year.

It might be tempting to attribute that to another point made in the analysis — that men’s representation is highest (41 percent) among nurse anesthetists, the nursing occupation in which salaries are highest.  (For the first time in 2010, the Census Bureau collected data of five different categories within the field: registered nurse, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife, nurse practitioner, and licensed practical and licensed vocational nurse). But less than 4 percent of men in nursing fall into that category. Rather, Landivar, attributes that pay gap to the observed “glass escalator” effect in which men who enter women-dominated professions tend to advance quicker than their opposite-gender counterparts.

I sense, though, that the stereotypes associated with being a man in the field of nursing are still just as strong as they have been in the past.