Where Are All The Male Nurses? (Part 1)

Something has piqued my curiosity in the last little while. Perhaps you can help me out with understanding this phenomenon.

The gender gap in the work force.

There is a growing concern that the majority of workers in the science and technology industry are male. This is causing people to ask "Why aren't women going into science and technology?" Here is an example of one such article:

http://www.girlscouts.org/news/news_releases/2006/doe.asp

In the past year I've seen many-an-article, television ad, and banner-ad on various web sites showing concern over this.

This is a part of the larger concern re: the gender income gap; men earn more than women. A lot of that can be explained away by how most high paying jobs are occupied by men. Sure, most CEOs are men. Having attended both college and univetsity I saw that some programs were conspicuously male, and others female, and some a mix.

I started off in Aviation. Women represented just over 10% of the class. I then switched into Computer Engineering. My graduating class was 100% men. Mind you, there were only four of us. But in the larger class of Computer Engineering, Computer Programming, System Support, and Networking it would have been about 10% female. A walk through the college would show that the automotive wing was mostly male, and the hair dressing students were about 99% female.

In university, most engineering students and computer science students are male. Most language students were female. (Although my experience with business students is about half and half. There may be a gap there, but it's small enough to not notice by just looking.)

So there's this push to get more women in high paying fields, especially science and technology. Or, stated another way, to get more women into traditionally male dominated fields.

So my question is this:

Where's the push to get men into female dominated fields?

Of course, the first objection to this question is that female dominated fields are usually low paying, such as hair dressing, and beautification (or whatever it's called). Okay, so maybe we shouldn't be pushing boys to go en mass into hair dressing, or early childhood education just to even things out. (Average starting salary for early childhood education graduates is about $12 000/year.)

But what about nursing? Most nursing students are female. Nurses don't make minimum wage. They can do quite well for them selves. Ahh, but are there nursing jobs out there? YES! We're not producing enough nurses to fill the demand. In fact we're facing a dangerous shortage of nurses! When was the last time you saw an ad trying to recruit men into nursing?

Now, don't misread me. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to recruit girls into science and technology, or other high-paying fields. But we should see both sides of the equation, lest we
be accused of holding a double-standard.

When it comes to making the work force equitable, as a society we're still not 100% consistent. While studying computer science in University most students were either from Bangladesh, or from Sault Ste. Marie, and were white. There were a few Asians in the mix too. But I noticed a conspicuous lack of Native's. Yet, I hadn't seen any push to up the Native population in computer science. Yet Algoma's Native population would be very high compared to most other universities I'm sure. (I could be wrong. I have done no research on this.)

Or we could take a different approach to thing. Instead of obsessing over how certain fields need representation equal to the general population make-up we could take a novel approach and encourage people, both boys and girls, to explore their talents, skills, aptitudes, desires, and choose a life-path based on those things.

Nah....that'd never work.

Should I Stay, Or Should I Go

I'm at a crossroads right now. I am working at completing my final course, chemistry. When I finish that course, Algoma University will owe me a three year bachelor of science degree with a computer science major.

Now, if I take eight more classes (technically seven, but one of them is a full year course, and might as well be two classes) then I can get a four year bachelor of computer science degree.

What I want to know from you, my faithful readers, is do you think it's worth it?

Here's some extra facts that may play into your advice:

1. I'm now older than I'd like to be at this stage, and I want to get on with my life.
2. I have a three year Computer Engineering Technologist's diploma.
3. I have two years working experience at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources where I did some database design and maintenance work (in Access), some software testing, and a bit of programming.
4. I worked for Point of Presence technologies programming and doing database work for about a year.
5. I have two years experience doing web site programming (HTML/CSS/Perl) with the federal government.

Furthermore, the way the schedule is at Algoma this year, I would have to do 6 courses in the fall semester, and two in the second. I would also be holding onto my job and working at it for 15 hours/week.

Do you think it's worth it? Or should I stick with the three year degree and be happy with that?

---

Update

I wrote this nineteen years ago. I decided to stick with my three year B.Sc. program. I finished in December, 2006, and graduated at the next graduation ceremony. I did not go.

However, I managed to get another co-op term to continue wtith the government. Then, when I graduated, I was "bridged in" with the federal government; ie: I was hired as a Term. (Just over a year later, I was made Indeterminate, aka: "permanent".)

Also, not a single reader commented.

Coolness

Right now the main fridge is empty. We use the fridge in the garage as our main fridge. It's kind of annoying always having to go back and fourth between the kitchen and garage.

However, the freezer of the kitchen frige doesn't freeze things, but it does keep them cool. So we use that as a fridge.

Car Update

Turns out all the car needed was an oil change. All trips to the mechanic should be that easy.

Don't Mow My Lawn

When I first moved in with theMcQueens in September of '04 they had a ride-on lawnmower. It was a cool looking machine. Robin used to mow the lawn. She would ride around on it. She would have fun with it.

Then, soon after I moved in the mower broke. One of the belts in the engine broke. Now, if you remember previous blog posts, this was the time that the cars were breaking down. Plus it was when Craig and I moved down. Life was busy. When life gets that busy in September, a broken-down lawnmower falls down the priority list.

The grass grew.

It soon started to snow. Then I went back to the Soo. I came back down to Ottawa in April. The snow had melted. The grass was long. They hadn't fixed the lawnmower yet. They checked out hardware stores for replacement belts, but to no avail. The stores didn't have belts the right size.

After a while of the lawn had gotten really long. The above-ground pool started to look like an in-ground pool. They borrowed a lawnmower from one of Robin's teachers who lived in the area. They continued to use that lawnmower for that summer.

In September, I moved back to the Soo for eight months. I returned the following May. They were still using the borrowed lawnmower.

Thankfully, they managed to buy a used lawnmower. It's a pretty nice mower. It's a maulcher. They returned the borrowed lawnmower. Apparently, it broke down soon after it was returned. (Or maybe it was that the owner's other mower had broken down...I forget.)

What Grinds My Gears

You wanna know what really grinds my gears?

When you're driving along in your car, and you shift from one gear to the next, but you let out the clutch a little too soon, before you're fully in gear.

That's what really grinds my gears.

The Pool Is Cool

Pastor Jack took all the sand out of the pool filter and took out the tube with the protruding fingers. The tube was split in two. The fingers were fine.

We set out to replace the tube. It seems they make the tubes differently nowadays. Our tube only has one opened end. Tubes these days have both ends opened. So Pastor Jack had to get a plug to close one end.

So, now the filter is working. But there's a bunch of sand on the floor of the pool. So, it will need to be swept up. No biggie.