Sadly, discrmination against male nurses still rampant in job applic process

[Ecstatic2014]

Hey guys, I highly encourage you to try hard and strive for excellence during your nursing school career.

But I just came here to vent, because I have graduated from a BSN nursing program last year, May 2014.

Come to find out that several of my FEMALE nursing classmates are working as some kind of RN. Whether it's in a care home, long-term assisted living facility, an acute-care hospital job (which is very hard to get here in my area, if you have ZERO experience as an RN!!!), several of my FEMALE classmates have RN jobs.

Life is so #(*U#$*^%# unfair!

For me, I have been working as a nurse aid/tech at a hospital in my area, since July of last year.

I am proud to work for the facility that I work for.

However, I have passed my NCLEX-RN board exam, have my state RN license, yet I am working as a tech?

Here in my neck of the wood, you have to work as an aide/tech for certain amount of time before you're eligible to apply for an RN new graduate program. This program is offered at the hospital that I work for. However, to get admitted into this program,...there is stiff/high competition. I also heard through the grapevine that applicants need to be a member of one of the hospitals committee to get into this program. So far, I am not invited to join a committee, let alone, I have asked one of the floor managers if I could join his committee, only to have him change the date and time of meeting last minute, to prevent me from attending the montly meeting (which I thought was downright dirty!).

Anyhow, getting back to the point of my thread, I found out last week that a female classmate of mine, who was a good friend of mine, is working as a med-surg RN at a hopsital in town!

She has zero experience in acute care nursing. Yet, how the hell did she get hired to work med-surg at that hospital?!!!

For me, I am working as an aide, waiting to apply for a new graduate position.

I have also submitted job applications for RN positions at other hospitals in my area, only to get no phone calls, or when I call their HR office, they tell me that my application is on "hold" because there are no openings available.

Furthermore, I also saw another female classmate's picture, in one of the local newspaper's article (featured a story about that hospital's healthcare system). The caption read " XXXXX (

For her, I am happy and proud that she's now working and getting RN PAY RATE.

But for me, I am getting flustered and frustrated that I am 'behind the curve' not getting paid what I should get paid, not using my RN skills that i have learned in school.

I don't know guys.

Overall, I still feel that there is heavy discrimination against males when it comes to the hiring process of RN's and even nurse aides/techs, in not only my area, but other parts of the US.

I am also upset because I called up that former friend classmate, asking her about her job, how she likes it, etc, only to have me leave her a voicemail to call me back. I also sent her a text message and email, asking her to email me back, or call me back.

So far, no phone calls.

Seems like my former classmate and friends in school are smug/complacent that they're working as RN's, while as for me, I am dreading everyday, and waiting and waiting for me to get admitted into my hospitals "new graduate" program for nurses who recently graduated from school, with zero/zilch nursing experience.

[Zooey72]

Who are you, the token member police? I can turn around and ask the same question about you vs some other female applicant that got turned down. Being male has no correlation to being a good nurse. And when you do get hired will you tell the HR person that you don't want any kind of affirmative action that got you the gig, and in fact turn it down if that was the case? I'd like to see that. You sound like the guy crying hunger with two loaves of bread under each arm.

What question are you asking, you have me confused.

I am saying that standards should be met by either sex for any prof. and gender should not play a role. If a standard has been changed to get more of "X" type of person, than "X" type of person is not as qualified as the person who had the higher standards. That seems like a no brainer to me.

Crying hunger? If by crying hunger and having 2 loaves of bread you mean because I don't need assitance while other males do, you got me. What you are missing is the 2 loaves of bread I am holding I earned and did not have to have them given to me. I have no complaints about my chances making it as a nurse. I am saying affirmitive action is wrong across the board, and just because it happens to benefit me right now that doesn't make it any less wrong. Not to mention, I have straight As. I don't need it, and it is insulting to me to give me an unneeded advantage. I will sink or swim on my own merit.

[NuGuyNurse2b]

well that's good for you, but I don't see you turning down the nursing school spot that you got due to the same affirmative action that you are rallying against. I'm calling you a hypocrite.

[Zooey72]

Yes, I would. The issue is I don't need to because I have the grades that I know for a fact I do not need AA. Because you would be willing to be less qualified to cheat someone else out of a position does not mean others would be. Call me a hypocrite if you like, but one thing is for certain. You are unqualified if you had to have the rules changed in order to get in. And in addition it says something about your character that you are willing to steal someone else's spot because of your lack of ability.

The only reason I do not say anything is because rocking the boat will get it to where my ability will not be judged, only the fact that I rocked the boat and I am not going to take a chance of losing something that I have earned to make a statement.

The key word here is EARNED.

[Jensmom7, BSN, RN]

I think the OP is wrong. I have now talked to 2 nursing advisors who have said my gender is a bonus in both school, and getting a job afterwards. That being said, when people say that women get paid less for job 'X' than a man they either do not know all of the facts, or they leave them out.

Yes, in many cases men do make more than women. But this is not because of some grand sexist plot schemed up by evil men. It is a societal thing because the norm is that a woman will very often take time off to raise children, hence the average woman will not be in the workforce as long as the average man. That is the reason for the disparity in pay, and there should be a disparity. If you don't have as much time in at a job as someone else you should not receive the same pay. Now if you don't like that than I suggest you talk to your child's father as far as who it is who will stay home and watch the kid. You will get no sympathy from a man like me who is male, going to nursing school, and being a stay at home dad while my wife works. And in addition to that I am older than most, so on day 1 I will be making less than a woman doing the same job I am doing (being an RN), and that is the way it should be. If a woman my age has been doing this for 20 years and I have only just started why should I make the same money she makes? Conversely, had I been hired the same day as a female and we both work as RNs for 20 years, why should she make as much money as me if she took off 6 years to raise her child until the child could go to school?

When you take the child variable out of the equation there is no wage disparity.

As to why men are in more senior nursing jobs I would have to guess it would be because a male who wants to be a nurse may have a bit more passion for it. This is not meant to be a sexist remark, just given the way that male nurses are viewed by society you have to go through more stereotypes than a woman would have to go through. So if you are willing to put up with 'are you gay' as a constant question being asked to you because you want to be a nurse, you may have more drive than most.

Also, the stats that I have seen say that while most RNs are female, the proportion of male/female nurse practitioners is almost equal.

Heh. Back in the 80s we used to pray that more men would enter the field. The thought was "men know how to negotiate for better pay and benefits, so it will benefit all of us." Kind of like Regan's "trickle down theory".

Didn't happen quite that way. I don't know about starting pay, because I always believed in minding my own business, but that whole "women take time off to raise kids so they effectively work less and are less productive than the ones with the Y chromosome and therefore don't deserve the same consideration for pay and advancement" bull hockey??

Want to know how much maternity leave I got in 1984? Four weeks. Four. Weeks. And it started the day I gave birth. Oh, she was a 36 weeker with Hyaline Membrane who was intubated and in NICU for two weeks? Too bad. Got two whole weeks at home with my newborn, and then back to work full time because even though I was married, I was the primary wage earner and we needed my paycheck.

I honestly don't know how single mothers do it.

My advise to the OP? Put away your pity party and stop worrying about gender bias in Nursing. It exists. And many times, it's in your favor.

[elkpark]

I am saying that standards should be met by either sex for any prof. and gender should not play a role. If a standard has been changed to get more of "X" type of person, than "X" type of person is not as qualified as the person who had the higher standards. That seems like a no brainer to me.

Crying hunger? If by crying hunger and having 2 loaves of bread you mean because I don't need assitance while other males do, you got me. What you are missing is the 2 loaves of bread I am holding I earned and did not have to have them given to me. I have no complaints about my chances making it as a nurse. I am saying affirmitive action is wrong across the board, and just because it happens to benefit me right now that doesn't make it any less wrong. Not to mention, I have straight As. I don't need it, and it is insulting to me to give me an unneeded advantage. I will sink or swim on my own merit.

Please get over yourself. Yes, we get it, you're super-well-qualified for nursing school. The only "standard" that has been changed is that nursing programs used to routinely, arbitrarily exclude males and minorities, and now they don't. That doesn't make males or minorities who are now being admitted "not as qualified." Nursing programs are trying to make up for past bad behavior by being more proactive about admitting qualified male and minority applicants. Formal "quotas" have been illegal, per the Supreme Court (in a case that was brought, of course, by a white male who was upset about not getting into the school he wanted), since 1978, and schools have had to go to court repeatedly over the years since then to even be allowed to consider gender or ethnicity at all as one factor among many. There aren't two sets of admission criteria or "quotas." (Did the school advisor you spoke to actually use the word "quota," or was that your interpretation of what she said? I find it v. hard to believe she actually said "quota.")

And, yet, at the same time you're hyperventilating about how grotesque and unfair it is that you're being discriminated against, you're hauling out the same, tired, discredited arguments about how women aren't being discriminated against? Nice.

[Zooey72]

I won't argue someone's personal experience. I don't know you. You may be dougie houser, or one of the cast off of scrubs. My point is that when they say "women make less money than men for the same job" they do not factor in time off. You took off 4 weeks, my mother took off 15 years to stay home and raise me and my sisters. If someone can show me an apples to apples comparison of men and women with similiar work experience and education, and the women are not making as much I will listen and can be swayed. But when large factors like taking a decade off of work are not calculated into the equation, the statement "men make more than women for doing the same job" holds no weight.

Those numbers should not be hard to find. Just compare women who have never had children and compare them to men who stayed in the workforce for a similiar amount of time. It should be easy info to find. I suspect the reason we have not seen research like this is because the PC crowd would not like the results.

[Dogen]

Those numbers should not be hard to find. Just compare women who have never had children and compare them to men who stayed in the workforce for a similiar amount of time. It should be easy info to find. I suspect the reason we have not seen research like this is because the PC crowd would not like the results.

So someone did something similar: they looked at wages of college graduates one year after graduation, by field. They found women were still paid less than men, on average. They even accounted for parenthood. Since the average age of motherhood for college-educated women is 30, most of these women probably aren't losing out due to maternity leave.

[Zooey72]

So someone did something similar: they looked at wages of college graduates one year after graduation, by field. They found women were still paid less than men, on average. They even accounted for parenthood. Since the average age of motherhood for college-educated women is 30, most of these women probably aren't losing out due to maternity leave.

The article you provided stated how pay/age effect both genders, but I saw nothing about pay difference between men and women at all. The comparisons I saw in the article were about men comparing to men, and women comparing to women. How old when a couple has a child, and how it effects them. I did not see anything about comparing men to women at all, much less putting children in the equation.

Maybe I missed something, could you provide a quote?

[NuGuyNurse2b]

First of all, it's "affect" not "effect" - you're confusing your verbs with your nouns. Straight A's, huh?

And the study compared men to women. It said it in the report, it showed comparison between men and women in the charts. I don't think you bothered reading it, so I won't much less help you with your homework by quoting it for you.

[Zooey72]

Those charts do not answer the question if maternity leave or gaps in employment because of children play into why the disparity exists. It is specific about the controls, and that is not one of them. "Never married" does not mean childless.

Also that second article is blatantly political in the way that it is written.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

Please get over yourself. Yes, we get it, you're super-well-qualified for nursing school. The only "standard" that has been changed is that nursing programs used to routinely, arbitrarily exclude males and minorities, and now they don't. That doesn't make males or minorities who are now being admitted "not as qualified." Nursing programs are trying to make up for past bad behavior by being more proactive about admitting qualified male and minority applicants. Formal "quotas" have been illegal, per the Supreme Court (in a case that was brought, of course, by a white male who was upset about not getting into the school he wanted), since 1978, and schools have had to go to court repeatedly over the years since then to even be allowed to consider gender or ethnicity at all as one factor among many. There aren't two sets of admission criteria or "quotas." (Did the school advisor you spoke to actually use the word "quota," or was that your interpretation of what she said? I find it v. hard to believe she actually said "quota.")

And, yet, at the same time you're hyperventilating about how grotesque and unfair it is that you're being discriminated against, you're hauling out the same, tired, discredited arguments about how women aren't being discriminated against? Nice.

Exactly. It's like he's saying that because he's being looked at favorably for his gender, somehow it is putting him at a disadvantage because they're ignoring his awesome achievements entirely. Zooey72, get a clue. There is no nursing shortage. You may be qualified to get into nursing school but you really have to learn some humility to actually get a job once you graduate. You're in for it, dude.

[Dogen]

The article you provided stated how pay/age effect both genders, but I saw nothing about pay difference between men and women at all. The comparisons I saw in the article were about men comparing to men, and women comparing to women. How old when a couple has a child, and how it effects them. I did not see anything about comparing men to women at all, much less putting children in the equation.

Maybe I missed something, could you provide a quote?

I don't want to be a jerk or anything, but literally the entire article is about pay disparity between men and women upon graduation. This is the third paragraph:

The report controls for occupation, major, hours worked, parenthood, and many other factors to reveal that college-educated women working full time were paid an unexplained 7% less than their male counterparts were paid one year after graduation. To clarify, this analysis looks at men and women who have made the same educational and occupational choices and still finds a gap.

Sixth paragraph (emphasis mine):

Plus, women fall further and further behind the eight ball over time. AAUW's research report The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap found that women are paid about 90 percent of what men are paid until age 35, when women's median earnings typically drop to 75–80% of men's. So, not only does the pay gap make us feel like we've traveled back in time, but it's also only going to get worse over time — and women cannot ever truly recover. Salaries dictate how much women will have for retirement and function as the starting point for all future raises.

The rest of the article is about a woman at an engineering firm finding out she was paid less than the men she supervised. Were you looking at the second link, maybe? That was just a source for the claim that the average age for college-educated women to have children is 30. I like to try and cite all my claims. :)