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.

[dianah, ASN]

To ALL members:

Please confine your responses to professional (i.e., what you would write or say to a group of professionals) comments that speak to the subject of the thread only.

REFRAIN from personal attacks and name-calling, both of which are violations of the Terms of Service.

Report any posts that may violate the Terms of Service.

Thank you for your attention to this.

[supakimchee]

To the OP on the original post:

Please refer back to what you learned in nursing school about evidence based practice. You can't jump to conclusions because you don't have a job and all your female counterparts do.

Correlation does NOT imply causation.

You have not submitted an iota of evidence that your Y chromosome is directly related to your unemployment as nurse.

[Zooey72]

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:

Sixth paragraph (emphasis mine):

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. :)

I took for granted we were still on the same topic that I pointed out, that leave from work is what causes the pay disparity. I am not arguing that the disparity does not exist, I am arguing the reason it does exists is because women tend to take time off work to raise children. I did not see anything in those links you posted that seriously contests my assertion. When "parenthood" is part of the control, than in what way? Are you talking about a woman who took of 1 day to have the child and than made up the time at work the next day? Or are you talking about a woman like my mother who stayed at home for 15 years?

Never at any time did I say that the gap does not exist, I believe it does. I am saying that if the reason it exists is because they have not been in the workforce as long than it should exist. If someone shows me research on both men and women who have never had children, and all the other controls are taken into account, and the man is making more than I will gladly change my mind. But leaving such a huge 'detail' out makes any research invalid.

I believe we are looking at the same article, but I did have go to it several times because I was bombarded with pop ups.

As to the other posters with and quota systems. As I said this is not my first degree. I have a history degree with a minor in poly sci. There not being an "official quota system" is like saying Jim Crow never existed (not comparing the the severity of Jim Crow to a quota system, saying that whether quotas are official or not they have been put in place). I think you know that extra points are given across the board based on things that are not related to performance, but for the sake of 'diversity' or some slight that happened in the past.

Also, I find it fascinating that the white male has been discriminated against in the past when it comes to nursing. If you are talking about stereotypes about sexuality inhibiting a man than sure. But unless there was something other than some 1/2 wit calling a male nurse a '***' I don't see where you can prove that that has historically happened. The reason there are few male nurses is the gender role that is associated with being a nurse. Even if I were to concede that there has been past discrimination against male nurses... so what? Have you been discriminated against? Why should what MIGHT have happened to someone else decades ago have any bearing on what a male nurse is doing today? If any kind of advantage is given to male nurses (which at my school I have had 2 advisers tell me males as well as age are taken into account) there shouldn't be. I don't care if not 1 male ever becomes a nurse again as long as they were beaten out fairly by the women who are going for the same spot.

I never said I was discriminated against, I said I find it insulting that the system is set up the way it is.

It is like trying out for a baseball team but the males are mandated to use the T-ball because it is presumed that they can not hit the ball (and you have to use it whether you want to or not). The guys who knock the ball out of the park when they come up to bat want to be held to the same standards as everyone else. It is only the ones who can't make the team without the 'T' that complain the 'T' is needed.

As per the moderator, I have toned down. Please if you respond do likewise. If you can't post anything civil (don't care if you agree or disagree) than please ignore my post.

[Dogen]

I took for granted we were still on the same topic that I pointed out, that leave from work is what causes the pay disparity. I am not arguing that the disparity does not exist, I am arguing the reason it does exists is because women tend to take time off work to raise children. I did not see anything in those links you posted that seriously contests my assertion. When "parenthood" is part of the control, than in what way? Are you talking about a woman who took of 1 day to have the child and than made up the time at work the next day? Or are you talking about a woman like my mother who stayed at home for 15 years?

Never at any time did I say that the gap does not exist, I believe it does. I am saying that if the reason it exists is because they have not been in the workforce as long than it should exist. If someone shows me research on both men and women who have never had children, and all the other controls are taken into account, and the man is making more than I will gladly change my mind. But leaving such a huge 'detail' out makes any research invalid.

The first bolded sentence is the part that I was addressing in my prior post. It seems like you were hanging your hat on one possible variable that leads to difference in pay between men and women - that women leave the workforce to raise kids. My point was that there are other variables in play, and that the issue is in fact multivariate. Leaving the workforce to raise kids probably does affect wages, but that effect is on top of the systemic wage difference that's displayed in the fact that women who get the same education and make the same career choices start out at lower wages right out of school. The reason I like this research is because it specifically addresses the issue of time in the workforce, because both the men and women in the AAUW study had one year of experience. Which is about as close to controlling for all the variables as I think you're going to get (it's impossible to account for every possible variable in research).

Regarding controlling for parenthood, what that means is that statistical controls were put in place to remove the effect of parenthood on the results. You can, for instance, do a multiple regression analysis that estimates the effect size of a particular variable, called a beta weight. You input a variety of variables and test to see how much weight each one has on the variable in question (income), and with a large sample size the results are surprisingly accurate (it's a standard statistical methodology). In addition, as noted, college educated women tend to have children later, which limits the effect of parenthood on this sample.

[elkpark]

I took for granted we were still on the same topic that I pointed out, that leave from work is what causes the pay disparity. I am not arguing that the disparity does not exist, I am arguing the reason it does exists is because women tend to take time off work to raise children. I did not see anything in those links you posted that seriously contests my assertion. When "parenthood" is part of the control, than in what way? Are you talking about a woman who took of 1 day to have the child and than made up the time at work the next day? Or are you talking about a woman like my mother who stayed at home for 15 years?

Never at any time did I say that the gap does not exist, I believe it does. I am saying that if the reason it exists is because they have not been in the workforce as long than it should exist. If someone shows me research on both men and women who have never had children, and all the other controls are taken into account, and the man is making more than I will gladly change my mind. But leaving such a huge 'detail' out makes any research invalid.

I believe we are looking at the same article, but I did have go to it several times because I was bombarded with pop ups.

As to the other posters with and quota systems. As I said this is not my first degree. I have a history degree with a minor in poly sci. There not being an "official quota system" is like saying Jim Crow never existed (not comparing the the severity of Jim Crow to a quota system, saying that whether quotas are official or not they have been put in place). I think you know that extra points are given across the board based on things that are not related to performance, but for the sake of 'diversity' or some slight that happened in the past.

Also, I find it fascinating that the white male has been discriminated against in the past when it comes to nursing. If you are talking about stereotypes about sexuality inhibiting a man than sure. But unless there was something other than some 1/2 wit calling a male nurse a '***' I don't see where you can prove that that has historically happened. The reason there are few male nurses is the gender role that is associated with being a nurse. Even if I were to concede that there has been past discrimination against male nurses... so what? Have you been discriminated against? Why should what MIGHT have happened to someone else decades ago have any bearing on what a male nurse is doing today? If any kind of advantage is given to male nurses (which at my school I have had 2 advisers tell me males as well as age are taken into account) there shouldn't be. I don't care if not 1 male ever becomes a nurse again as long as they were beaten out fairly by the women who are going for the same spot.

I never said I was discriminated against, I said I find it insulting that the system is set up the way it is.

It is like trying out for a baseball team but the males are mandated to use the T-ball because it is presumed that they can not hit the ball (and you have to use it whether you want to or not). The guys who knock the ball out of the park when they come up to bat want to be held to the same standards as everyone else. It is only the ones who can't make the team without the 'T' that complain the 'T' is needed.

As per the moderator, I have toned down. Please if you respond do likewise. If you can't post anything civil (don't care if you agree or disagree) than please ignore my post.

I still can't believe you are so worked up about this.

There is no "quota system." We are talking about qualified candidates being given a slight, marginal advantage over other qualified candidates. A quota system would be 20%, or 16 slots, or whatever, of the freshman class each year being reserved for males, and even if only blithering idiot males apply, we will take the top 16 of the blithering idiot males who apply, because we are going to have 16 males in the class (no more and no less), come heck or high water. That is an entirely different matter than what anyone here is talking about or any nursing school I have any experience with is doing (and a distinction I would expect someone with a history degree to understand ...)

And it may be true now that "the reason there are few male nurses is the gender role that is associated with being a nurse," but that has not always been the case. It is true (and plenty of us dinosaurs here can personally vouch for this) that, in the not-so-distant past, nursing programs simply refused to admit males. Period. I attended school in the early 1980s, and there were four males in my class of ~100 students and they were only there because the school was experimenting with admitting males. That was the first year the school had ever admitted a male student. At least half of the faculty thought this was a horrible idea and had no problem letting the male students, and everyone else, know that. (For that matter, I and the other older female students were still considered an experiment at that time, and plenty of the faculty had no problem letting us know they didn't approve of us being there, either. Interesting times ... :))

Again, I've been involved as a faculty member in a few different nursing schools, and I've not encountered any suggestion that the admission standards were being relaxed for male candidates; just that male and minority candidates who met the established admission standards got a slight advantage over the rest of us. If anyone is going to be getting worked up about this, I would think it would be us white females.

If you're this deeply offended by the notion that you have a marginal, slight advantage in the admissions process by virtue of your Y chromosome (and the significant discrimination males have faced in nursing in the past), feel free to pursue some other occupation which practices pure, unadulterated social Darwinism (if you can find one).

[NuGuyNurse2b]

As per the moderator, I have toned down. Please if you respond do likewise. If you can't post anything civil (don't care if you agree or disagree) than please ignore my post.

Um you were the only one who needed toning down - that's why your post was deleted and another one of it was edited. I reported your post cause you obviously cannot handle a difference of opinion and found it necessary to attack me in your post instead of being an adult (for your age) and responding back in a more civil manner. Clearly this internet thing is a problem for an older student such as yourself. If you get so heated over an internet message, I can't imagine how you react in real world pressure situations. You are aware that nursing requires patience and understanding? And no, when you post on a public forum such as this, people will respond to them. Stop trying to tell people they shouldn't respond to you. You don't run it, it's a free discussion forum, deal with it. And if you can't, maybe you shouldn't be on the internet.

[vigor145]

I don't' have the time to read through all of these other posts, but something should be knocking on your brain telling you that SOMETHING isn't right. You are working at a HOSPITAL, who knows you have passed the NCLEX and they won't hire you as an RN?

As they say in architecture.............."The lines don't meet."

I work as a Student Nurse (Tech) in NICU in a highly coveted Baltimore City hospital. Sure a lot of students applied but did not get picked for the interview; only two of us did. But pretty much I am guaranteed a job in NICU once I pass my NCLEX in a year and a half. That is, if I even want to work in the NICU; if not I will still be a shoe-in for other departments.

The fact that your hospital continues to allow you to work as a aide while you have been an RN for well over a year.. Something isn't right here.

Has anyone looked over your resume and cover letters? Have you networked? I began networking/schmoozing in my first semester of nursing school just to have contacts.

EDIT: Out of the 80 originals in my cohort, 10 were males. For Student Nurse positions in Baltimore City, they all secured jobs before the females did. Maybe they applied earlier, I don't know. But coming out of our top 10 school. males have traditionally found it easier to find jobs here than females. This is overall.

[tkdman37]

Yeah OP, it's most likely you. I will openly state, as a male I would not have been interviewed if I were female for my current job.

As a male i have constantly been asked to help do the heavy lifting on each unit I worked on…yes I am singled out, which I have no problem with because we are a team.

I have not experienced any negative discrimination since being a nurse.

this is exactly my thought. Male nurses are highly sought after now adays. i got my current job as a nurse tech because i was male and in school. I am constantly approached at my clinical sights to when i will be graduating and if I will apply at that hospital. Everyone now a days loves male nurses. Its probably because this dude has a ****** pity party personality that he has no job yet. Or it could be the grades? Maybe references? but definitely not because he is a male.

[evolvingrn, BSN, RN]

I think guys are at a total advantage in nursing. We love hiring male nurses ( we only have 2.... But we want more!!!). Most likely those nurses have connections or are great at networking....... That is how I have gotten all my jobs. As floor the nursing manager ...... Trust me .... You aren't even in their radar that they would change times do you couldn't attend. Quit being the victim and start applying...... Think about moving!!

[Guest849204]

I'm very sorry for your situation, but honestly I don't think it has to do with your experience or gender. In fact, almost everyone I've spoken to on the subject has told me male nurses have a significant advantage. They are viewed as more dedicated because the idea is since nursing is traditionally a female profession, the few men who become nurses must really want to be nurses because if they didn't why would they want to put up with the associated stereotypes. A lot of the RN's I have met have also told me they like have a male nurse on the floor to make things a little diverse. We also have a reputation as being good nurse because again, most men who go into nursing really wanted to do so, its very unlikely that a man would become a nurse "just to get a job" because its such an abnormal career choice for men (abnormal in the statistical meaning).

Unfortunately, getting hired can be tricky. So much depends on stupid things like how your resume comes across, how well you interview, personal bias in recruiters, and especially WHO you know. If you are more of a reserved person, you will struggle coming across as a confident professional in interviews and my have limited networking connections.

Just keep trying, you will find something eventually. Med-surge is a good place to start but I'm sure you have heard that already. Figure out what you long term plan is and dont jump at the first job that opens up if you don't thinks its a good fit, you will be better off waiting for a job more suited to your aspirations and likes.

[Kiwiguy]

so let me get this straight.. you applied for a job, didnt get it so discrimination is the reason you were not successful?

[bgxyrnf, MSN, RN]

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.

There are many reasons that people do not get hired and generally those are related to how the person presents themselves. Based on this single data point, you're not presenting yourself very well.

You come off as having a sense of entitlement and being excessively focused on others rather than yourself. This post reeks of resentment toward others who have progressed more quickly than have you. To that I'll add that your post also presents you as a victim, not what anybody is looking to add to their team.

Finally, your grammar is quite poor.

All of these are working against you and you're kidding yourself if you think that you come off one way here but totally different elsewhere.

From what I've read, I wouldn't hire you either.

And to your point: My experience and observation is just the contrary... guys seem to get hired more easily than gals.