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Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem? There is, but you'

Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem? There is, but you're probably not that exposed to it often by dint of (presumably) not being part of that industry. But if you look into it, there's concern about the lack of male nurses and a concerted effort to improve diversity (the same for other professions with traditionally female-skewed demographics, like teaching).

MartinCron 13y ago
Shame on you, letting facts and reality ruin what some poor guy thought must be a really good argument.
thenomad 13y ago
Really? That's very good news, and I hadn't heard about it at all. Do you have some links to orgs working to get more men into female-skewed professions? I'd be very interested to read them.
- sanxiyn 13y ago
  Quick Google search turned up http://menteach.org/ http://menteach.org/ for example, founded in 1979 to get more men into teaching. Frankly, organizations working to get more men into teaching or nursing is so easy to find by Google, I think people claiming otherwise should be assumed to have agenda. I am starting to suspect these are intentional trolling.
mudil 13y ago
Diversity, when it comes to sexes, is such a nebulous idea. Here is a comment I left above. What amazes me is that in this whole conversation no one even mentions the differences between men and women, as these differences were shaped by evolutionary forces. In all our attempts to make women and men "equal", not just in this country, but across the world, women and men still go into different professions and do have different interests, and are good in their gender-specific things. There is a reason for that: men and women are different. Surely, there will be women in tech and men in nursing. But the differences are there and they go back hundreds of millions of years, and they've been shaped by real evolutionary forces, and they play out every day in myriads of ways. For all the scorn that Harvard University President Lawrence Summers got in 2005 for bringing out these issues, he was coming from a serious scientifically-based view on differences of sexes. For those who want to understand how evolution shaped women and men, I recommend to start with Dawkins' books (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene), and then to read "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley, and "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller. And, hey, I am talking to the audience here, since it is mostly composed of men (there is a reason for it): understanding the evolution of sex will make you better at picking up women!

MartinCron 13y ago

Shame on you, letting facts and reality ruin what some poor guy thought must be a really good argument.

thenomad 13y ago

Really? That's very good news, and I hadn't heard about it at all. Do you have some links to orgs working to get more men into female-skewed professions? I'd be very interested to read them.

sanxiyn 13y ago
Quick Google search turned up http://menteach.org/ http://menteach.org/ for example, founded in 1979 to get more men into teaching. Frankly, organizations working to get more men into teaching or nursing is so easy to find by Google, I think people claiming otherwise should be assumed to have agenda. I am starting to suspect these are intentional trolling.

mudil 13y ago

Diversity, when it comes to sexes, is such a nebulous idea. Here is a comment I left above. What amazes me is that in this whole conversation no one even mentions the differences between men and women, as these differences were shaped by evolutionary forces. In all our attempts to make women and men "equal", not just in this country, but across the world, women and men still go into different professions and do have different interests, and are good in their gender-specific things. There is a reason for that: men and women are different. Surely, there will be women in tech and men in nursing. But the differences are there and they go back hundreds of millions of years, and they've been shaped by real evolutionary forces, and they play out every day in myriads of ways. For all the scorn that Harvard University President Lawrence Summers got in 2005 for bringing out these issues, he was coming from a serious scientifically-based view on differences of sexes. For those who want to understand how evolution shaped women and men, I recommend to start with Dawkins' books (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene), and then to read "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley, and "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller. And, hey, I am talking to the audience here, since it is mostly composed of men (there is a reason for it): understanding the evolution of sex will make you better at picking up women!