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Contradictions and tensions: exploring relations of masculinities in the numerically female-dominated nursing profession.
by Joan Evans , Blye Frank A non-essentialist stance, making visible the history of men's | | varied experience and defining men's lives as contextual,
relational processes of communication and connection with each
other and with women, will allow us to make visible current local
struggles that undermine power and to see that not all men's
practice is a practice of negativity toward women. As well, this
would allow for the visibility of the ambiguity and multiplicity
of men's current practices, rather than effectively denying the
present and presenting social transformation as detemporalized.
(Frank, 1993, p. 341)
| | Within the scholarly work on gender in numerically female-dominated professions, there continue to be gaps in the analyses on men and the relations of masculinity. The lives of men nurses, as men who do "women's work," provide insight into the complexity of gender relations and the structure of the gender regime in nursing and the broader society. The data for this paper were gathered in 1998 through two rounds of open-ended interviews with eight men registered nurses practicing in the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. Through their voices, the paper explores the experience of men nurses--an experience that is revealed to be particularly problematic given that masculinity itself is often defined by the labor men perform (Levine, 1992; Willis, 1977). The belief that nursing is an extension of the domestic role of women has been instrumental in establishing nursing, not only as a woman's occupation, but also as unskilled and less valued in comparison to those of men (Porter, 1992). Rarely, if ever, are men, as men, understood through the prism of gender (Kimmel & Messner, 1992). Similarly, there is little understanding of the ways in which gender, "that complex of social meanings that is attached to biological sex, is enacted in our daily lives" (p. 3). This paper contributes to the understanding of the gendered relations within nursing, and more specifically, focuses on the contradictions and tensions that men nurses experience. As Connell (1995) suggests: | | We are all engaged in constructing a world of gender relations....
Men, no more than women are chained to the gender patterns they
have inherited. Men too can make political choices for a new
world of gender relations. Yet, those choices are always made in
concrete social circumstances, which limit what can be attempted;
and the outcomes are not easily controlled (p. 86).
| | THE FEMINIZATION OF NURSING While numbers are increasing somewhat, there has not been a significant increase in the percentage of men in nursing (Jacobs, 1993; Wootton, 1997). In Canada and the United States, for example, only 5% of nurses are men (CNA, 2002; Minority Nurse Statistics, 2002). Despite a significant increase in the number of men entering nursing education programs in the United States in the last decade (6% to 12%; Brooks, Thomas, & Droppleman, 1996), 85% of men as compared to 35% of women either drop out or fail (Poliafico, 1998). Perhaps in response to the low numbers of men in the profession, there has been an increase in the visibility of men nurses in the popular media and in nurse recruitment advertisements. This strategy has been largely unsuccessful in attracting greater numbers of men into the profession and raises the question: "What's going on?" The maintenance of individual hegemonic masculinity, those practices of any one man that are culturally supported by the present set of patriarchal gender relations, often requires the presence of other men for its support (Newton, 1998). For the small number of men who enter and remain in nursing, the particular challenge may be the maintaining of their hegemonic masculinity through the display and support of a positive masculine identity in the absence of other men (Berger, Wallis, & Watson, 1995; Connell, 1996a). Men in nursing fear that they will be perceived as "unmanly" and ostracized (Barkley & Kohler, 1992; Chusmir, 1990; Kelly, Shoemaker, & Steele, 1996). Such fears are not unfounded, as they reflect cultural intolerance of behaviors considered to be gender-aberrant (Halloran & Welton, 1994). Structural impediments to men "crossing over" the gender divide may exist to a greater degree for men than for women. In support of this statement, it is acceptable in some situations for young women to act as "tomboys," whereas, in almost all instances, it is unacceptable for young boys or men to compromise prevailing notions of masculinity and be "sissies" (Bradley, 1993; Jacobs, 1993). Epstein (1997) adds ...
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