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Is the term "Nurse" too sexist for a job description?
March 20, 2016 - 6:49pm
Just putting that out there.maybe already been discussed...
While men have recently started to enter Nursing in greater numbers than in the past, I think that Nursing is still regarded as -- and is -- a mostly female profession.
So we could call them "Associate Medical Professionals" if we wanted to, but as soon as everyone realized that "Associate Medical Professionals" were roughly 90% female, it would be the same thing.
To put it another way, I don't think the issue is that the word "Nurse" is somehow sexist, it's that the profession remains gendered.
Agree..I also think that term scares the heck out of testosterone laden males that may otherwise consider entering into the practice. (Milking is not part of the job anymore is it?)
Well, again, I don't think it's the term, but rather the reality: they'd be entering a mostly female world.
As a consolation prize, men who enter Nursing are more likely (statistically) to be given administrative roles, and more likely (statistically) to be given academic leadership roles. No huge surprise there, I guess.
Just as an aside, when I was a McMaster student back in 1986, one of my residence-mates was a dude, in the Nursing program. But he didn't actually want to work as a Nurse; he just saw it as a backdoor to medical (i.e. "Doctor") school. I've no idea whether it helped him with that.
I hear ya. But there is something blatantly out of balance (not very 2016) about the optics of the term(word).
well when people think Dr they think male....should we change it too because of gender imbalance in the field and if we changed it more women would go into the field?
I know plenty of male RNs and LPNs. None of them seem to mind the title Nurse, None of the male RNs and LPNs I know have been given administrative or leadership positions.
You so called aggressive feminists/feminazi's are never ever going to be happy and you guys if you want to be men so bad get a sex change.
what a pos post this is.
I love it. I think there should be a mushroom cloud visible out the window, but otherwise perfect.
Aren't guys already men?
What a shitlord.
I don't think real men use the word feminazi. It's weirdly wimpy and hostile at the same time. It reminds me of the conspiracies are for losers thread.
I don't really know what a troll is..but I know it's not good...sorry for having a thought.
Have you Googled it yet? You should really Google it.
Ok..checked it out..I feel nothing wrong with raising a potentially challenging question, issue, thought
Personally I don't highly value emotional responses to something as benign as a question, about the general political correctness of a term.
Perhaps this is no longer the forum for such debate. It once was.
I work with dozens of nurses, and though women are still the majority, there are plenty of men.
I work alongside of crafty tradesman that probably regard the medical industry, in a professional sense, as being "above" them. And yet would be horrified to learn that their son would cinsider a career as a "nurse" but not so much a "medical assistant "
I see no reason to humour sexist homophobes by changing the name of a profession to suit them. If men are intimitated by the title "nurse" or their parents opinion of it they wouldn't make good nurses anyway.
You seem to think men not wanting to be nurses is a problem. It isn't. No one is preventing them or trying to discourage them from being nurses. There is no evidence that male nurses have more trouble getting work than female nurses.
Ward, you really might want to have a chat with some actual nurses -- male and female -- before you go off and create a new job title for them. One of the (many) stereotypes they contend with on a daily basis is that of being an "assistant" rather than a profession in their own right.
Do you think they'd be similarly horrified if their daughter wished to apprentice as a welder?
If not, what do you suppose might be the difference? See Pondering's post above for a free hint.
there's even the title out here of Nurse Practitioner. they can do anything a GP can do but make 200,000.00 less.
i think Ward is the one with the problem over the job title.
I could be wrong about this, but I wonder if maybe the earnings discrepancy is because a NP doesn't bill directly, while a GP does?
It's my understanding that OHIP (or your provincial equivalent) pays a set amount by procedure (e.g. administering an allergy shot) and not by job title. But you keep all of that amount if billing directly as a practitioner, and not if you're paid by an employer (e.g. a walk-in clinic) who bills.
Apparently in the US at least men are entering nursing at larger rates all the time. The unreal part of that equation is they make more than women although at 91 cents on the dollar that is way better than most occupations.
https://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupations.pdf
Sexist? Probably not. Gendered? Yeah. Stewardess is a good example of a gendered title which the profession has been trying to change. I haven't heard of a call for nurse to be changed but I can see where you are coming from.
Sexist? Probably not. Gendered? Yeah. Stewardess is a good example of a gendered title which the profession has been trying to change. I haven't heard of a call for nurse to be changed but I can see where you are coming from.
Stewardess (like waitress, or actress) is a gendered term because there exists a separate term for a male doing the same thing (steward, waiter, actor), and I know that the preferred terms now are flight attendant, server and actor.
But there's no word for a male nurse. Except, for those who really wish to make the distinction, "male nurse".
I had never heard the term "airline stward" before. I didn't know it was used that way.
I still think nurse is gendered. The word itself came from "nurice, derived from the fifth-century post-Classical Latinnutrice, a wet-nurse" and has through it's history been a word associated a great deal with women.
Here is a source https://nursemanifest.com/2012/04/24/some-history-on-the-origin-of-the-w...
Just for the record, I'm certainly not suggesting that the term isn't still strongly associated with women.
So is the word "tampon". But that's not the same as either of them being "gendered".
Anyway, if actual nurses start agitating for a different title for their profession, I'll listen quite attentively. But to just go ahead and change it to something else so that men won't feel emasculated if they choose it for a profession?