Gender Diversity in the Nursing Workplace

At a time when patient access to institutional health care may be limited by the protocols of managed care, adherence to physicians' instructions, which are often mediated by nurses, are essential. Yet according to the American Nurses Foundation, minorities account for more than 27% of the American minority patient population, even though minority nurses account for only about 10% of the 2.65 million RNs in the US. Further, patient compliance with health treatment plans tends to vary directly with cultural affinity between patients and nurses (Nurse Force, 1999). Typically, of course, minority populations are denominated in terms of culture and race. However, the fact that male nurses comprise only 6% of the entire nursing work force in the US (Hilton, 2001; Hess, 2001) is instructive in terms of patient compliance if it is assumed what is perfectly possible, that the male-female ratio of patients in the American health-care system is roughly 50-50.

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e higher end of the nurse-salary scale (average $65,050 annually), while primary care nursing and nurse midwifery--both historically dominated by women--pay an average of $52,800 and $42,600, respectively (Dunne, 2001). These figures suggest that there is some evidence that women's career experience in nursing to some extent parallels their experience of prevailing culture. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as of 1999 women's median weekly earnings were 76.5%, with median annual earnings for women working full time coming in at 72.2% of men's annual earnings (US Dept. of Labor, 2000). From one point of view, then, nursing career options might benefit from more male presence, hence greater gender diversity, while nursing high-end salary scales and professional-development options might benefit from more female presence, hence greater gender diversity. To attempt to reconcile evidence for and against gender discrimination at different entry points on the discipline's continuum seems something of a fool's errand, with reports of the need for and consequences of gender diversity taking such disparate points of view. What is clear is that a more holistic understanding of the content of gender diversity in nursing may be usef
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)