Caregiving should be considered one of the most admirable professions out there. After all, caregivers are entrusted to care for loved ones who often in extreme pain from chronic illness. They are typically called upon to support families during incredibly difficult times. Caregivers frequently work long hours throughout both days and nights to ensure that their patients are as comfortable as possible. Few careers require such compassion, patience, energy, and poise in the face of tremendous responsibility. So how is it that caregiving is such an unrecognized and underappreciated profession – especially for male caregivers?

The problem may lie in the way that the profession is perceived by society in general, and by the medical community in particular. Historically, caregiving roles have (and in most ways continue to be) perceived as feminine. Because women bear the brunt of the world’s unpaid labor, providing subsistence for their families and caring for children, aging parents, and sick relatives, the vast majority of human cultures see caregiving as a distinctly gendered practice. To fly in the face of traditional caregiving roles is to risk being ostracized for breaking social taboos, something that stay-at-home dads, concerned sons caring for aging parents, and especially male nurses can tell us plenty about.

Gordon Rogers, an ER nurse for the past thirty years at University Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, explains how it took a long time for even his own mother to stop asking him when he was planning to become a doctor.

“It took her a while to get over the idea that no, I wasn’t going to ‘graduate up’ and become a doctor. That I was happy doing what I was doing.”

Rogers says it isn’t uncommon for his patients to make the same mistake, explaining that he frequently hears comments from patients who assume that his position as a male nurse is only a stepping stone. Many people find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t be using his male privilege to move on to a higher paid and better respected position as an MD.

Jerry Lucas of Male Nurse Magazine concurs:

“Our problem is that that’s the perception, this is a feminine thing, that you can’t be a nurse unless you’re feely-touchy.” Lucas feels, however, that popular perceptions about caregiving are slowly starting to change. “It’s not feely-touchy anymore. It’s taking care of patients the way you would take care of your family.”

But, with male nurses comprising as little as 5% of the nursing work force, discrimination is still something many male nurses deal with on a daily basis. Lucas recounts:

“I had a lady come in one night who was probably having a heart attack. In that setting we have a lot to do in a short amount of time. And we get her undressed so that we could hook her up to her monitors and everything – and then she requested that we turn our backs. I said ‘ma’am please get undressed so we can get you on this monitor’ because there were only two nurses there and we were both males. But until we turned our backs, this lady would not undress – even though she was dying of a heart attack!”

Lucas believes that the problem lies in society’s basic ideas about gender, particularly when it comes to intimate procedures like inserting a catheter or assisting in the delivery a baby.

Nigerian-born Sylva Emodi, who taught as associate professor of nursing at a California university, said that the discrimination he experienced while teaching labor and delivery in a California hospital disturbed him so much that he eventually got out of maternity care and pediatrics altogether.

“I remember going to a rotation at a local hospital. The head nurse made it difficult for me to be able to supervise students in labor and delivery, pediatrics and postpartum, I think, because I’m a guy. She’d say, ‘You are not a medical doctor, you cannot go into labor and delivery.’ After a while, I had had enough, so I went to the doctor directly and said, ‘I need to be here with the students. The students need to see what is going on.’ The doctor said, ‘Sure, help yourself. Come on in.’ “

While the head nurse eventually apologized for her behavior, Emodi says that he still experienced hostility from other faculty members. Finally, he became so fed up that he left both the university and hospital where he was teaching. Today, Emodi is supervisor of the Palo Alto VA Health System’s psychiatric unit in California and says that he’s glad he pursued a career in nursing, despite the discrimination that he experienced.

Still, many men feel intimidated to even enter the nursing profession. And Lucas adds that it’s not only men that feel hesitant to pursue caregiving careers.

Like schoolteachers, nurses are in high demand. Nurses and caregivers are rarely given the respect that they deserve, especially within the medical community, in large part because these roles are perceived to be feminine. As a result, few people are choosing these professions.

While some people suggest that a minority of male nurses are being pitted against female nurses who dominate the industry, in reality, male nurses who experience gender discrimination are actually just getting a taste of the same patriarchal oppression that their female counterparts experience on a daily basis. Any woman working in a profession perceived as socially-acceptable for women, such as being a nurse, caregiver, childcare provider or receptionist, is likely to receive worse treatment and less pay than she would in a male-dominated job that requires the same skills. While this situation seems bleak, the fact that men are entering the nursing profession means that they have the opportunity to use their male privilege to speak out against gender discrimination.

Nursing professor Susan Boughn, who teaches at the College of New Jersey School of Nursing in Ewing, studies why men and women choose nursing careers.

“If we had all nursing students concerned up front about their basic human labor rights and empowering not only themselves and their patients but also the profession, that’s a good place for students to be,” says Boughn. “I think if we had a long history of that, we would not be where we are today with the nursing shortage.”

However, many in the nursing and caregiving profession are beginning to empower themselves. Several male nurses throughout the U.S. and the U.K. have filed gender discrimination lawsuits in recent years – and won. In a landmark case, the U.K. Equal Opportunities Commission supported 29-year-old nurse Andrew Moyhing, who filed suit against a National Health Service hospital after the hospital required that Moyhing be accompanied by a female chaperone when performing intimate procedures on female patients. While the hospital claimed that the regulation was in place “as a safeguard against the generalised risk of assault upon a female patient and/or false accusations of assault against male nurses,” the Tribunal ruled that the regulation was based on an assumption that all men are sexual predators.

Jenny Watson, Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, said:

“The women and men who work so hard in our hospitals are professionals and deserve to be treated as such. This type of discrimination against men based on misconceptions about their behaviour does nothing to help ensure patient safety.” Watson also concluded:

“This case has wider implications. EOC research shows that over a quarter of boys in school are interested in caring work, yet only one in ten nurses is a man and only 1 in 50 childcare workers. This disconnect between levels of interest and the tiny numbers of men entering the caring professions won’t be closed until we challenge our assumptions about the type of jobs that modern men should do, and start enabling young men to make their own choices, free from outdated stereotypes.”

While we have a long way to go before we can put these stereotypes behind us, cases such as these demonstrate that some progress has been made. Within his first ten days in office, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which guards against gender discrimination in the workplace. And in 2002, Johnson & Johnson launched a long-term campaign to promote the nursing profession, with male nurses factoring prominently in television ads that aired nationwide. Alluding to the courage required of many male nurses and caregivers dealing with gender discrimination, the campaign’s slogan was, “Dare to Care.”

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