> I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing

Correct

> or know anyone who does

Incorrect

> There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

Enlighten me.

Well, I'm not in the profession, but my partner has and she has seen a focus on male students at her school, as well as a preference for male nurses in hiring. These are completely anecdotal, of course, so what do we get if we google "men in nursing"?

American Assembly for Men in Nursing: http://aamn.org/

Census report on men in nursing fields: https://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupa...

An article from Men In Nursing magazine: http://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=65843... (admittedly on the second page)

The Male Nurses Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/MaleNurses/

I just thought male nurses was a particularly poor example, as people are interested in increasing the number of male nurses, and looking at the census report they have been having steady success.

I guess I don't see nearly as much in the mainstream media about the gender disparity in nursing as I do for tech, and certainly not on Hacker News. I can come up with other examples though. There aren't big pushes to get more women into construction, the military, emergency services, and other less topical fields just like there aren't pushes to get more men into interior design, event planning, human resources, and other female dominated fields. Could it be that people are just choosing what they would like to do for a living rather than being told what they should like to do?

They're probably talking about "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" which briefly grabbed attention over a decade ago.

Want more men in nursing? Discourage them from being competitive and choosing to become doctors. Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1. Men become physicians and surgeons. Women become obstetrics and pediatrics. As a general rule of thumb, most fields that show a gender difference lean heavily towards social bias and differences between gender preferences than discrimination against anyone. I don't know when it became so socially unacceptable to have different preferences than someone else.

Disclaimer:

I don't work in nursing. My grandmother was a nurse for 35 years. I'd hardly call it an "active movement". I don't closely follow the statistics (frankly, I don't care) but it is easy to see that it has not been successful by any significant margin.

> Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1.

Matriculation in US med schools was ~47% female this year.