[vacri]

I personally don't think an even split in every area is the right way to go. But the percentage of men in nursing is in the single digits - far from 'an even split'. There are concrete benefits to having more male nurses - some patients respond better to being handled by a member of a given gender. Same thing with teachers for young children, in that more male teachers means having a broader, better range of role models. 'Matching the demographic proportions' is a stupid goal, but 'well-represented' isn't.

[berrypicker]

This is going to sound like an is-therefore-it-ought-to-be fallacious argument but it makes sense to me that there are more female nurses simply because women are better suited to the task and more importantly want to be nurses? I mean there are probably historical reasons for the low number of male nurses and other things to attribute the low ratio to but we didn't sit down one day and force females to be nurses.

Healthcare and educations has way bigger problems than some patients responding better to male nurses. There's a lot of what I consider grasping at straws when it comes to this sort of discussion. Let's start by talking about the curriculum and spending and stuff that has way more of an impact on our society.