The Return of Men to Nursing
The share of men in nursing has shifted from declining in the early part of the twentieth century to increasing in more recent years, to the point that it has exceeded its historic high. Previous research has suggested that when an occupation that is dominated by one gender receives a large influx of the other gender, the occupation gender mix “tips,” and that this process rarely reverses. The growth of men going into nursing occupations suggests that nursing is an empirically rare example of re-integration after a gender tipping point has been passed.
We consider two competing explanations for the change in employment over time. First, rising expected wages and employment probabilities in nursing combined with deteriorating prospects in other occupations change a worker’s relative expected income. Using data from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and Current Population Survey, we estimate the extent to which changes in employment have been driven by changes in expected income. Second, the U.S. population has become more accepting of men taking jobs in traditionally female occupations over time. Such changes in attitudes and norms may have been more accentuated in some parts of the country than others. Using the General Social Survey, we examine the merits of this explanation using measures of gender-role attitudes to control for changing tolerance of holding nontraditional occupations. We also consider the importance of role models for non-traditional career choice by examining the impact of earlier cohorts of men in nursing on participation among subsequent cohorts of men.