Should efforts be made to recruit men into female dominated professions?

Question

Would there be benefit to having more male teachers, social workers, psychologists, nurses, etc?

Answer 1

There are efforts to increase the number of male nurses and other medical assistants, and to reduce the stigma attached to it.

To my knowledge, none of those other fields are female-dominated.

Answer 2

There aren't more female teachers, the number of men in further and higher education teaching far outweighs women. More men in the primary school? Maybe. I went an all boys school and the teachers were all male. It was like a military regime (I hated it).

Psychology is also not dominated by women. Only by the number of women entering psychology degree courses.

Answer 3

Well we would benefit, especially since many of these involve children (specifically teachers) and many children lack male figures in their lives these days.  However, the means by which this would be done would go against basic equal rights and violate all sorts of laws under ERA.  This is true for recruiting women into male dominated professions.

Le Voleur- The number of female teachers far outweighs the number of male teachers, even if you add higher education instructors.  This is largely due to the number of elementary and secondary teachers (roughly 90% female) greatly out numbering higher education instructors.  Perhaps your experiences lead to this skewed view.

Answer 4

It used to be that men dominated all professions (clerical, teaching, etc.) and then women came in and the pay decreased.  As soon as the pay decreased, the jobs were relegated to "the elastic workforce" known as women...after all, they were only there to make "pin money" and buy baubles.  Because of this, men didn't like women entering the workforce, as their joining meant salaries going down.  The salaries are still down in teaching (primary grades), social work, nursing, daycare, and clerical, and all of these professions are still dominated by women.  If men were recruited into these fields, you can be assured that salaries would increase.  One  thing preventing men from entering these professions is the stigma attached to doing a "woman's job," and that needs to be addressed first.  Another issue is the suppositions one makes about men who want to work with young children or with the elderly.  A male cousin who teaches primary-aged children is constantly scrutinized because he's an anomaly, and he must be some kind of "pervert" to want to work with kids, right?  Wrong.  A lot of men would make a significant impact on kids in the primary grades who are exposed almost exclusively to female teachers until high school and post-secondary.  This is the case in Canada, at any rate, where there is active recruiting to get men into teaching the younger grades.  There is also recruiting to get women teaching older, high-school kids (especially in math and science).  I don't believe that any of this recruiting will be successful as long as we look askance at men who want to be involved in these professions, and as long as we continue to stereotype women as the nurturers (and therefore better at the professions you name) and men as potential abusers.    

Answer 5

Let the market place take care of it. When men feel it is in their best interest to join those professions, it will happen.

Should we reduce the the standards for male nurses just to fill a quota?. That is my main problem with feminism, allowing standards to be reduced so more females can join a profession.

Answer 6

I work in a female dominated industry, Marketing/PR.  Trust me on this; when women are in control of an industry, they are no more accepting of men than men are of women in a male dominated industry.  So, don't expect an easy task if you want to increase male presence in any female dominated industry.  I believe that we could certainly benefit from more male primary school teachers.  This might counteract the protectionism that girls receive in primary school.  

Answer 7

I'd like to hand out towels at the ladies gym.

Answer 8

It says something about you that you even think this question is interesting.  WHO CARES?!  Why don't we just leave things be and let everyone gravitate toward whatever professions they choose.  IF certain professions attract more of one s*x than the other, who cares?  Every racial imbalance isn't because of racism and every gender imbalance isn't because of discrimination.  Some things just are.  

Now breath.

Answer 9

I'm not into social engineering, so I say let the market place decide what percentage of men or women are in a certain occupation.

I was a male nurse for 7 years. I had to get out. I couldn't stand working with women. I won't bore you with all reasons why.  

Answer 10

Yes, completely.  Just as there are adverts showing female engineers, pilots, etc, there should be those showing male nurses, child carers, secretaries, maids, cleaners, domestic workers, carers etc etc.  :-)

Answer 11

I don't know how necessary it is for education. In my graduating class, the people who intended to be teachers were mostly guys. As for the other three, sure, why not?