Why America Needs More Men Working in Health Care and Education

Article here. Excerpt:

'“I didn’t know that men could be doctors,” my son said to me when he was about six. We were driving home from a visit to the pediatrician. I was perplexed. But then I realized that the doctor we’d just seen was the first male physician he’d encountered.

I reassured him that men could indeed be doctors. But I was careful to add, “and nurses, of course.” His observation was a powerful reminder of the feminist mantra: “you have to see it to be it.” If any particular activity, including a job, is seen as being for people of the opposite sex, it is unlikely to feature in your own aspirations.

My son’s elementary school had an all-female staff, so it took a while to convince him that men could be teachers, too. Role models matter. As Gloria Steinem said in 1995, “The way we get divided into our false notions of masculine and feminine is what we see as children.”
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There are three pressing reasons to get more men into HEAL. First, given the decline in traditional male occupations, men need to look to these sectors for jobs. Blue collar jobs are disappearing. There will be more STEM jobs, too—but these are much smaller occupations. STEM accounts for only about 7% of all jobs, compared to 23% in HEAL. For every STEM job created between now and 2030, there will be three new jobs in HEAL. The labor market is feminizing faster than men.'