Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#11

Post by tdeck »

PhilWright wrote: post #8
moomin wrote: post #5

Someone with a shallow familiarity with feminism like myself won't find anything surprising here. That patriarchy (which is a set of commonly held attitudes) disadvantages men as well as women is well understood. That many women have patriarchal attitudes is also well understood. However, don't assume that these things are fixed. Highly feminine occupations such as film editor and software engineer have long since "f…

It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people. So in a society that provides complete equality you will find that some professions are dominated by a particular sex. Nursing is dominated by women because far more women enjoying working closely with people than men do. That is not going to flip. The feminist idea that all professions should end up with about 50% particip…

So you'd expect most managers and CEOs to be women right, because that's a job about working with people?

Be careful of statements about human nature whose only evidence is "it's well known that". You can easily ascribe cultural attitudes to something more fundamental without realizing it.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#12

Post by solatic »

tptacek wrote: post #6

We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered, but also poorly captures the responsibilities of the modern nursing profession. It is batshit crazy that our first line of medical care in the US is medical doctors. For 80% of what ordinary people see doctors for, Nurse Practitioners are superior to doctors: they're more available, can spend more time with patients, and can more easily escalate cases to doctors o…

To put it in more tech-industry terms, doctors are either Level 2 (general practitioners) or Level 3 (specialists) health support. Adding more low-cost Level 1 health support is a great way to reduce the workloads of L2 and L3 and thus both reduce costs throughout the system as well as improve outcomes for most ~customers~ patients.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#13

Post by puranjay »

tdeck wrote: post #11
PhilWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people. So in a society that provides complete equality you will find that some professions are dominated by a particular sex. Nursing is dominated by women because far more women enjoying working closely with people than men do. That is not going to flip. The feminist idea that all professions should end up with about 50% particip…

So you'd expect most managers and CEOs to be women right, because that's a job about working with people? Be careful of statements about human nature whose only evidence is "it's well known that". You can easily ascribe cultural attitudes to something more fundamental without realizing it.

I'd argue that most managerial positions are working with systems and processes. People happen to be a part of those systems and processes. Which is why managers call their underlings "resources" - screws and bolts that can be moved around to make the system more efficient.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#14

Post by watwut »

moomin wrote: post #5

Someone with a shallow familiarity with feminism like myself won't find anything surprising here. That patriarchy (which is a set of commonly held attitudes) disadvantages men as well as women is well understood. That many women have patriarchal attitudes is also well understood. However, don't assume that these things are fixed. Highly feminine occupations such as film editor and software engineer have long since "f…

There is way more mockery targeted at men who like my little pony then on women who like boy shows.

People tend to look down on men who do feminine anything.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#15

Post by ableton »

throwawaycopy wrote: post #10
PhilWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people. So in a society that provides complete equality you will find that some professions are dominated by a particular sex. Nursing is dominated by women because far more women enjoying working closely with people than men do. That is not going to flip. The feminist idea that all professions should end up with about 50% particip…

Being that we're hairless apes who rely on clothing, fire to break down our food, and a host of other technologies just for basic survival, I'd say our natural biology is pretty damned unimportant when it comes to such high level behavior such as preferred profession in the Western world. Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is sway…

I have thought about this a lot, and yet when you observe little kids, little boys want to play with trucks and cars, and little girls like playing with dolls. Nobody has to tell boys to play with cars or toy guns. They just like them. Obviously everybody's an individual. But by and large I think there are trends at such a young age it's apparent that the gender differences in occupational choices aren't just due to culture.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#16

Post by PhilWright »

throwawaycopy wrote: post #10
PhilWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people. So in a society that provides complete equality you will find that some professions are dominated by a particular sex. Nursing is dominated by women because far more women enjoying working closely with people than men do. That is not going to flip. The feminist idea that all professions should end up with about 50% particip…

Being that we're hairless apes who rely on clothing, fire to break down our food, and a host of other technologies just for basic survival, I'd say our natural biology is pretty damned unimportant when it comes to such high level behavior such as preferred profession in the Western world. Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is sway…

Well the research says you are wrong. This is not exactly exiting bed time reading but shows my point.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#17

Post by imartin2k »

tptacek wrote: post #6

We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered, but also poorly captures the responsibilities of the modern nursing profession. It is batshit crazy that our first line of medical care in the US is medical doctors. For 80% of what ordinary people see doctors for, Nurse Practitioners are superior to doctors: they're more available, can spend more time with patients, and can more easily escalate cases to doctors o…

"Associate Doctors" - seriously a brilliant idea in my eyes.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#18

Post by imartin2k »

PhilWright wrote: post #8
moomin wrote: post #5

Someone with a shallow familiarity with feminism like myself won't find anything surprising here. That patriarchy (which is a set of commonly held attitudes) disadvantages men as well as women is well understood. That many women have patriarchal attitudes is also well understood. However, don't assume that these things are fixed. Highly feminine occupations such as film editor and software engineer have long since "f…

It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people. So in a society that provides complete equality you will find that some professions are dominated by a particular sex. Nursing is dominated by women because far more women enjoying working closely with people than men do. That is not going to flip. The feminist idea that all professions should end up with about 50% particip…

"It is well known that men favor working with things and women favor working with other people." The problem is that you use the status quo as an argument for why things cannot change. There have been a lot of things in history that were "well known" until they stopped being that way. I'm not ignoring the fact here that certain gender-specific evolutionary hardwiring exists. But that does not rule out that there could be ways to get more men to work closely with other people. Such as, as suggested by a commentator above, renaming professions. By the way, doctors work with people, and doctors are often male. It's likely more about status than the degree of work with people.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#19

Post by 0xbear »

solatic wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #6

We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered, but also poorly captures the responsibilities of the modern nursing profession. It is batshit crazy that our first line of medical care in the US is medical doctors. For 80% of what ordinary people see doctors for, Nurse Practitioners are superior to doctors: they're more available, can spend more time with patients, and can more easily escalate cases to doctors o…

To put it in more tech-industry terms, doctors are either Level 2 (general practitioners) or Level 3 (specialists) health support. Adding more low-cost Level 1 health support is a great way to reduce the workloads of L2 and L3 and thus both reduce costs throughout the system as well as improve outcomes for most ~customers~ patients.

Except of course no one in this system is interested in reducing costs.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#20

Post by moomin »

ableton wrote: post #15
throwawaycopy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being that we're hairless apes who rely on clothing, fire to break down our food, and a host of other technologies just for basic survival, I'd say our natural biology is pretty damned unimportant when it comes to such high level behavior such as preferred profession in the Western world. Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is sway…

I have thought about this a lot, and yet when you observe little kids, little boys want to play with trucks and cars, and little girls like playing with dolls. Nobody has to tell boys to play with cars or toy guns. They just like them. Obviously everybody's an individual. But by and large I think there are trends at such a young age it's apparent that the gender differences in occupational choices aren't just due to…

Your big assumption here is that kids are ignorant of culture and pay no attention to non-explicit signals. This is demonstrably and wholly false.
Post reply on HN