Male and Female Nursing Applicants' Attitudes and Expectations Towards Their Future Careers in Nursing

However, the most commonly proposed reason is that men are less likely to enter female jobs than women are to enter male occupations (Jacobs, 1989,

45 cited in Williams, 1992). Men have always had a role in nursing (Mackintosh, 1997), and furthermore, Evans ( 1997) suggests that the small number of men currently in the profession occupy a privileged position compared with their female colleagues. In the UK, 9% of

50 nurses are male, but just over half of the UK's top nursing positions are held by males (Wright et al., 1998). Furthermore, men are three times more likely

than women to be found in higher grades in nursing (Whittock et al., 2002).